Wellington Loafers Lodge fire: Firefighters keep diary to record Newtown 225′s mechanical woes
By RNZ
A second truck with a very long ladder was not available to firefighters rescuing people off the roof of the Loafers Lodge because it has been broken down for some time.
Frontline firefighters have been keeping a diary of Newtown 225, which has had 469 days in a row out of service - ever since it froze up at a house fire in Kilbirnie in February last year.
It has spent just 45 days in operation since July 2020.
Asked if having the Newtown 225 large truck at Tuesday’s fire in Newtown would have helped, FENZ’s regional manager and assistant national commander Bruce Stubbs told RNZ he did not know.
“There’s been some mechanical problems with it, so we are working with our fleet provider to get that back on the run.”
The truck’s total days in service, when it was able to fight fires, are:
Its absence leaves the city and region with just a single truck with a 32m-long ladder, which rescued five people off the lodge’s roof.
Newtown 225 is one of seven Type 5 trucks nationwide, plus three old relief trucks.
A smaller Type 4 truck with a 17m-long ladder was also at the Newtown fire. There are 16 Type 4s nationwide.
Fire and Emergency has previously said it was “rare” to use ladder trucks to rescue people.
The firefighters’ union and FENZ management have been at loggerheads over fleet resilience and strategy for at least three years. FENZ has been working on a new aerial strategy.
Newtown 225 is an extreme but not isolated case of truck problems. For instance, at a big car scrapyard fire in Woolston last August, three fire trucks had issues, including - FENZ said later in an OIA response - Christchurch 214, which “lost power and control to the boom. All lights went off, and no control was available”.
The Newtown 225 diary says: “This isn’t a crack at any individual or organisation - just a summary of events highlighting some of the cracks in the system that sum up our frustration.”
Paraphrased excerpts from the diary of Newtown 225 (some dates approximate):
2020
2021
2022
2023