{"id":4561,"date":"2023-05-17T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2023-05-16T22:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=4561"},"modified":"2023-05-17T10:00:10","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T22:00:10","slug":"newtown-hostel-fire-firefighters-pretty-cut-up-they-couldnt-rescue-more-people-as-second-ladder-truck-unavailable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=4561","title":{"rendered":"Newtown hostel fire: Firefighters ‘pretty cut up’ they couldn’t rescue more people as second ladder truck unavailable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Firefighters lacked a second giant ladder truck to fight the\u00a0deadly Newtown fire<\/a>\u00a0because it was broken down yet again.<\/p>\n

Their sole 32-metre ladder truck with a basket on the end rescued five people off the roof of Loafers Lodge.<\/p>\n

It did a “fantastic” job of making “early” rescues, Fire and Emergency region manager\u00a0Bruce Stubbs told Morning Report today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But firefighters, who had been confronted by screaming people in a lodge stairwell, yelling at them to “save their mates who are up on the top floor”, did not have the second truck, Newtown 225, to call on.<\/p>\n

It has\u00a0hardly been on a job in more than two years<\/a>, and not since it froze up at a\u00a0house fire in Kilbirnie in February 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked by\u00a0Morning Report\u00a0<\/i>if having this second truck would have helped the rescue, Stubbs said: “I don’t know.”<\/p>\n

He said it had “mechanical problems” and they were working to get it back on the road.<\/p>\n

A senior officer told RNZ of concerns raised with him straight after the fire by seniors there, about two junior firefighters “pretty cut up” about not being able to save everyone.<\/p>\n

He added there would be others – and expressed anger at the state of the aerial ladder-truck fleet which the union has complained about for years.<\/p>\n

He said firefighters advised him even the smaller ladder truck – with half as long a ladder – that was used at Loafers, was labouring and had to be “nursed” to make it through.<\/p>\n

After the house fire last year, Stubbs told RNZ: “There are no concerns for public safety.<\/p>\n

“It is rare for an aerial [truck] to aid the escape of people from a burning building.<\/p>\n

“People use existing inbuilt escape routes and buildings are designed with fire safety measures, such as smoke and fire detection systems, sprinkler systems and protected egress pathways.”<\/p>\n

Investigations are underway at Adelaide Road into why the fire appeared to have spread quickly despite the building meeting current safety standards, and into what went wrong with the evacuation.<\/p>\n

The ideal for firefighters would have been to have had two of the largest 32-metre ladder trucks each covering two sides of Loafers Lodge.<\/p>\n

Instead, a Type 4 truck with a 17-metre ladder, poached from the Hutt Valley well before this blaze to make up for Newtown 225’s loss, was on Adelaide Road blasting water through the windows.<\/p>\n

Last March, Stubbs told RNZ: “Our firefighters are adept at adjusting their tactical approaches based on what they are faced with at the time.”<\/p>\n

Inside, crews made for the top floor, hauling high-rise equipment with them.<\/p>\n

When they got there, multiple rooms were already on fire and it did not appear to be a survivable situation.<\/p>\n

They felt the heat of black smoke that reached from floor to ceiling, backing up due to the lack of ventilation – a particularly risky situation – until, it seemed, a roof failure let some of the smoke escape.<\/p>\n

Outside, meanwhile, the Type 4 appliance shouldering a lot of the pumping, was having problems, the senior officer said. “We had to nurse that truck through,” he said he was told by those running the truck.<\/p>\n

Speaking about FENZ’s resourcing, Greens Party co-leader James Shaw, who like other parties’ leaders later in Parliament voiced sympathies for wh\u0101nau and praise for the quick action of emergency responders, also said: “What kind of country are we … where our firefighters lack, or [are] at risk of not showing up with the most basic of equipment to be able to fight these kinds of events.”<\/p>\n

Late last year, firefighters lifted a\u00a0ban they had imposed on Newtown 225<\/a>\u00a0over fears for their own safety, because crew had been\u00a0stuck in the ladder-cage when it froze up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

FENZ eventually agreed to the recommendations from an investigation into the Kilbirnie fire, to improve the management of its ageing fleet.<\/p>\n

However, it has a backlog of problems with cracks on some Type 3 trucks, and long wait times to buy new, larger trucks.<\/p>\n

Source: RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Firefighters lacked a second giant ladder truck to fight the\u00a0deadly Newtown fire\u00a0because it was broken down yet again. Their sole 32-metre ladder truck with a basket on the end rescued five people off the roof of Loafers Lodge. It did a “fantastic” job of making “early” rescues, Fire and Emergency region manager\u00a0Bruce Stubbs told Morning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-4561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-featured"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4563,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4561\/revisions\/4563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}