Fire truck shortage: Dozens of new chassis sit idle for a year amid cracking woes

Wednesday, 7 July 2021

A large fire at a campervan business near Auckland Airport broke out on September 3,2020, destroying an office and workshop. Two of the trucks broke down on arrival.

Dozens of new fire truck chassis purchased to plug a gap in New Zealand's beleaguered fleet have sat idle at a yard in south Auckland for about a year.

About 35 sparkling new MAN double-cab trucks, ready to be built into fire appliances, sit in rows at the Penske yard in Wiri.

Firefighters are grappling with a shortage of trucks and an ageing fleet, amid ongoing issues with ageing “relief appliances” used when the usual vehicles are out of service.

The sight of the lined up chassis has sparked frustration among the ranks of firefighters.

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The new vehicles are intended to be built up into type-three appliances, heavy pumps used mainly by career firefighters at busy stations.

The chassis are waiting to be built into trucks.

However, Fire and Emergency NZ (Fenz) is reluctant to build up the new chassis into pumps until the organisation finds a permanent, workable solution to ongoing issues with cracked sub-frames, firefighters say.

The MAN trucks, the latest type-threes acquired by Fenz, have a chequered past.

Sixty per cent were pulled from service for urgent repairs after cracks were found in their sub-frames. Fenz says the cracks themselves don't represent a risk to the public.

Their removal from service forced firefighters to use ageing “relief appliances” prone to embarassing breakdowns.

In September 2020, two such relief appliances broke down on arrival at a massive blaze in Auckland, delaying the response and leaving firefighters battling the flames without water, forcing them to beat a hasty retreat.

The previous year, a relief type-three caught fire on its way to a blaze in Wellington, one of two fire trucks to catch alight that day.

Fenz organisational strategy and capability deputy chief executive Russell Wood said of 47 MAN type-threes purchased, 28 were identified as needing remediation work.

“We have already fixed 20 of those, with eight still being out of service,” he said.

Rows of the new trucks have been parked up for about a year.

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The cracks are in the steel framing supporting side-lockers and other external areas in the body of the trucks, he said.

“A heavy vehicle engineer assessed the affected trucks and concluded the cracks in the steel framing are not a safety issue for our crews or the public.”

Fenz is currently in the process of selecting a new type-three appliance, but these are not expected to be on the roads for three or four years.

NZ Professional Firefighters Union Wellington Local president and fleet liaison Clark Townsley said if Fenz had a final, workable solution for the cracked sub-frames, then his union hadn’t heard about it.

He said the lack of trucks left crews extremely thin on the ground when it comes to back up appliances and the fleet team were “playing the odds”.

“Time will tell if they get away with it.”

Townsley said the Fenz procurement process was down to two models: dedicated fire trucks from UK companies Emergency One and Angloco

The union did not have a preference yet as it had not trialled either vehicle, he said.