'Disappointing' response to mayor’s push for an extra Hamilton fire station

Tuesday, 28 July 2026

Hamilton needs more firefighters and another station, Mayor Tim Macindoe told the Government.

Hamilton’s leaders will have to keep working the corridors to get the city a fourth fire station.

Firefighters presented their concerns about the city being short of one, maybe two, stations to the city council in April. In response, the council vowed to “bang the drum” in the fight for more resources.

Mayor Tim Macindoe started the push with a letter to the Government in June, saying it was critical for the growing city, and raising the spectre of the 2008 Tamahere Icepak explosion.

Minister for Internal Affairs Brooke Van Velden said where fire stations go isn’t her call.

The response, more than a month later, was described by Acting Mayor Geoff Taylor as “standard and disappointing”.

Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden said it wasn’t her call where fire stations went, and that she’d passed the concerns on to the decision-makers - Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ).

Their current plans don’t include an extra Hamilton station, she wrote, though “the organisation will continue to assess current and future service requirements”.

FENZ said it’s looking at options for Hamilton but more work is needed (file photo).

Taylor said the council wouldn’t give up on lobbying for a fourth fire station.

It would be on the agenda for an August meeting and councillors would be looking for ways to “continue this conversation with Central Government and FENZ in a constructive way”.

FENZ says it is considering options for Hamilton.

The minister’s response was ‘standard and disappointing’, Acting Mayor Geoff Taylor said, the the council would keep lobbying.

“Further work is required to fully understand the future resourcing requirements to meet the developing risk” posed by the city’s growth, a statement from region manager David Guard said.

Macindoe’s letter to the Government described a new station as a critical need that couldn’t wait for a lengthy national process.

‘Hamilton’s growth has outpaced the current emergency response model,’ NZPFU Hamilton local secretary Jay Culhane says.

The fast-growing city is “determined to avoid a repeat of a tragedy like the 2008 Tamahere Icepak explosion”, he wrote. If something of that scale were to happen today, there would be no firefighters left to cover any other emergencies happening at the same time, he wrote.

He suggested putting the fire station in the southeast - near the Ruakura development and the university, where the med school is under construction.

As it stands, Hamilton has three professional fire stations and 16 firefighters on duty at a time, but that’s no longer enough, he wrote.

“Crews are increasingly stretched, often relying on volunteer brigades from neighbouring towns, and when multiple incidents occur, all available capacity is quickly absorbed. In addition, their HAZMAT unit is servicing all of the Waikato Fire District, including Te Kauwhata, Coromandel Peninsula, Waihi, Matamata, Morrinsville, Cambridge, and Mokau.”

New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union local secretary Jay Culhane said in June that the city’s resources are stretched thin.

Meeting response times was a challenge, there was an increasing reliance on nearby volunteer brigades, and a growing city brought more complex incidents.

If there were two major events at once, Hamilton wouldn’t be able to field a command unit “because we are tapped out”.

“Hamilton’s growth has outpaced the current emergency response model,” he said.