Career firefighter staffing at 'crisis levels' across Auckland, union says

Monday, 16 May 2022

Firefighters battle a blaze at an Eke Panuku building in south Auckland that was hit by an alleged arson attack.

Staffing of career firefighters is at “crisis levels” throughout Auckland, resulting in trucks being out of commission, the NZ Professional Firefighters Union says.

In a post shared to Facebook, the union warned residents of the central Auckland suburb of Mount Roskill that there were no firefighters working at their local station because of the lack of career firefighters available.

“Career firefighter staffing levels throughout Auckland continue to be at crisis levels,” the post said.

Fire and Emergency New Zealand region manager Ron Devlin said some career firefighters were absent on Monday and one fire truck had been booked off service because of staff availability.

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However, he said he wanted to reassure the community that “we have the capacity and planning in place to respond to emergencies”.

Fire and Emergency NZ recruits for career firefighters twice a year. (File photo)

The union’s Auckland local secretary, Martin Campbell, said the Grey Lynn, Parnell, Saint Heliers, Mt Wellington and Manurewa stations were all short-crewed as of May 16.

Campbell said the past weekend had been the “worst” so far in terms of staffing – there were 23 gaps in firefighter coverage.

That included five fire trucks that were out of commission because of a lack of staff and “several” more stations that were short-staffed with fewer than the safe minimum number of four on board one fire truck, he said.

“It was almost a 20% reduction in service levels. Unfortunately, these shortages now appear to be the norm – with, almost every single day, shortages of firefighter numbers reported to the union throughout Tāmaki Makaurau.”

Campbell said firefighters had been working long hours in an attempt to fill the gaps.

One solution, according to the union, was recruiting and increasing firefighter numbers.

Devlin said Fire and Emergency recruited for career firefighters twice a year.

“We receive strong numbers of applications and quality candidates. We are currently running an additional recruitment for Auckland only, which opened on 1 April and will close on 15 May, with the objective of filling an additional 15 to 20 roles in Auckland.”

He said Fire and Emergency had been affected by absences during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, but contingency plans were in plans to maintain its capability to respond to emergencies.

Those included getting support from neighbouring brigades and reallocating resources.

“We have capacity built into our capability to allow for coverage on any given day should appliances be committed to large fires or when we routinely take trucks off service temporarily for several reasons – including training our people and maintaining our fleet.

“Like any large employer, we expect some of our staff will be absent on any given day for a variety of reasons, including sick leave and annual leave.”

The Auckland region had 33 career trucks operational and 122 career firefighters working in Auckland on Monday.

Fifty-one volunteer trucks and crews were also available.