Fire chief readies station for the future

by Janine Jackson

Raglan fire chief Frank Turner is only a few years off celebrating 50-years with the service but he’s not ready to call it time yet.

After several years as acting chief and many years as deputy, in February Frank formally became fire chief of the Raglan Volunteer Fire Brigade.

While he’s happier taking care of operational matters and it’s something he plans to go back to in a few years, the station needs to have enough qualified crew to fill the chief and deputy chief roles in the future.

With Dirk De Ruysscher, the only other officer, filling the deputy boots, succession planning is underway to ensure the brigade can fill both roles when Frank steps down.

Ray Bailey, Grahame Field, Steve O’Byrne and Caleb Kronfeld will start their station officer training and Frank says the clock is ticking.

“We're looking at moving forward and some of the guys are going to step up and do their station officers courses. I've given them until August 2025 and then I'm stepping down,” he laughs.

The course is hard yakka and requires a big commitment – there’s a five-day intensive at Rotorua as well as ongoing theory assignments.

Frank knows it’s a big ask of volunteers with fulltime jobs, families and lives outside of the service.

“They're more than capable, it’s just a matter of having the time, and FENZ (Fire and Emergency New Zealand) isn’t the be all and end all of their lives.”

A car painter by trade, Frank joined the service as a 22-year-old in 1975; he was working with panel beater Denny Robertson who was volunteering at the time.

Back in the day you could get away with putting out fires in jandals and shorts, and jumping on the back of the single cab Bedford.

“There was only room for two in the front and half a dozen holding on the back,” he laughs.

Uniform regulations and health and safety are some of the many changes Raglan Volunteer Fire Brigade’s longest-serving member has experienced in over 47-years of fighting fires in Whaingaroa.

Frank remembers when he first started with the service the crew fought fires without breathing apparatus - which didn’t become part of the volunteer firefighter’s kit until the late 70s.

“There was a lot of coughing and spluttering on the job.”

They were actually in the business of fighting fires back then and there were memorable ones that stick out in Frank’s recollections – the Raglan Wharf fire in 2010, John Hart’s garage fire and the bakery fire are a few that come to mind.

The fire at Hope’s homestead up the divvy saw Frank come close to sustaining a serious work injury.

“My mate just tapped me on the shoulder, I turned and took a step back, and a beam dropped where I had been standing,” he recalls.

The 22 Raglan crew members are fighting fewer fires these days but the number of call outs has increased - if they were lucky, they attended 30 in a year when Frank first joined; last year they attended 136 incidents.

Only eight of those were fires, the rest were motor vehicle accidents, weather-related incidents and medical events.

It means the level of training has increased as well with the crew doing the fire service first aid training so they can administer CPR, use the defibrillator and deal with other basic medical needs until St John can attend.

“The medical call outs have dropped back now because the ambulance is on eight-toeight, seven days a week. We still get the cardiac arrest but not like we were getting.”

Born and bred in Whaingaroa, both Frank’s grandfathers farmed in Te Mata and he was raised on the family farm, attended Te Mata School and went on to finish school at Raglan Area.

He’s not really left the district; there are a few trips overseas including twice to the firefighter games in Australia and Canada.

Serving the town he loves is one of the reasons Frank joined the brigade and in 2017 he received a Mayoral Community Award for his many years’ service to the Raglan Volunteer Fire Brigade.

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