SkyCity Auckland fire: Use of monsoon buckets not practical, could be dangerous

Wednesday, 23 October 2019

Bringing in a monsoon bucket to douse Auckland's SkyCity blaze with thousands of litres of water simply isn't an option, according to Fire and Emergency New Zealand.

Send your pictures and videos of the fire to newstips@stuff.co.nz.

Fighting this kind of fire, fuelled by man-made materials, was difficult, but the location of the blaze and building were also problematic.

Fire crews were battling the blaze at Auckland's SkyCity convention centre for a second day.

'In this instance it would not be effective to fight the fire with a helicopter due to the complex structure of the roof.'

The fire started in a corner of the roof of the building during construction on Tuesday afternoon and quickly spread across the seventh floor. Fire crews were using aerial units - known as 'snorkels' and similar to cherry pickers - to douse the flames.

Fire crews were using aerial units - known as 'snorkels' and similar to cherry pickers - to douse the flames.

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Monsoon buckets, which can carry up to 2000 litres of water attached to a helicopter, were predominantly used for vegetation fires.

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Dave Greenberg, an emergency and incident management specialist and former rescue helicopter crewman, said the aerial units fire crews were using appeared to be more efficient.

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Aerial units were able to constantly pump water onto the fire unlike monsoon buckets.

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FENZ explained in a tweet the current methods allowed firefighters to 'direct water to where it can be most effective.'

It said monsoon buckets, which can carry up to 2000 litres of water attached to a helicopter, were predominantly used for vegetation fires, like February's bush fires in Nelson. Using this method on a building fire was very rare.

Dave Greenberg, an emergency and incident management specialist and former rescue helicopter crewman, said he didn't have the expertise to comment on why one wasn't being used from a fire fighting perspective, but gave insight into its safety implications.

'From a totally practical and safety point of view, when you use monsoon buckets there's got to be somewhere safe for helicopters to come in and out with lots of space, and then they need to be able to get between the water source and the fire without flying over built up areas, that's civil aviation rules,' he told Stuff.

Greenberg, who was a crew member on the Westpac helicopter in Wellington for 25 years, said the aerial units - or snorkels - they were using appeared to be more efficient.

'A monsoon bucket might drop 500 or 1000 litres at a time, but it takes time to drop water and come back … so you're not continuously dropping.'

Aerial units he observed while in Auckland on Wednesday were 'just pouring water constantly for hours'.

Greenberg believed the use of a monsoon bucket would be dangerous and potentially deadly for Aucklanders if the bucket were to detach from the helicopter.

'It's somewhere between half a ton and a ton of weight falling from a great heigh. It would certainly kill people,' he said.

'It could be quite disastrous.'

Incidents of buckets falling were quite common, he said. 'It's not as uncommon as you would hope.'

In 2017, there were several accidents involving monsoon buckets, according to a helicopter safety update from the NZ Helicopter Association and Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand.

In Hawke's Bay in February, 2017, a bucket detached from the cargo hook and fell after the helicopter passed through turbulence. In the same month in Christchurch, a helicopter crashed after the bucket suspension cables hit the tail rotor.

Fire crews had been working at the scene since Tuesday afternoon. Many people voiced their support and appreciation of their hard work on social media.

This particular fire was being fuelled by a collection of man-made materials, including straw-like material sandwiched between a waterproof roof and plywood ceiling. This resulted in thick, black and toxic smoke blanketing the city.