Fire Brigade

The Martinborough Volunteer Fire Brigade held its AGM on 28 July which was attended by representatives of our neighbouring brigades from Featherston, Greytown and Carterton along with members of the Rural Fire Force Brigades. My annual report of the activities for the year focused on the following activities:

• Improving the Safety and Wellbeing of our members
• Achieving a full compliment of Emergency Response Drivers
• Increasing the number of non operational support staff
• Maintaining good financial management practice to ensure expenditure of money provided to us benefits our whole community
• Developing professional staff and succession planning to ensure the MVFB can remain sustainable for the long term future.

I can report on the following progress for the twelve-month period till 30 June 2015:

• The brigade received instruction on the new Fire Service Safety and Wellbeing system manuals and have commenced implementation of the new processes
• Dean DiBona, Brett Pederson, Callum Tannant and Lance Graves have completed all pre-course requirements for the Emergency Drivers course.
• Daphne Geisler joined our management committee as Brigade Treasurer and has lead the introduction of new finance systems
• John Mansell was recently appointed to the management committee as Brigade Secretary.
• Record numbers of our personnel have enrolled for specialist courses or the TAPS approved progression programs this year.
• Justin Hudepohl graduated from the Rotorua recruits course, which was a credit to himself, Training Officer Jake Hawkins and others who supported him with extra training hours. We have also recruited two more members, Brad Aldridge and Sara Hullah.

None of these achievements would have been possible without the efforts of the brigade members both past and present and most importantly the support of our spouses, partners, employers, community supporters and the NZ Fire Service.

The brigade responded to 63 emergency incidents for the financial year, down from the 5 years average of 82. This is a healthy downward trend for our community and it will be interesting to better understand the reasons for the trend, and how it may be maintained year on year.

The breakdown by type of incident:
• Rescue and Medical incidents now take first place in our workload increasing from 24% last year to 38% of the total, while False Alarms have dropped from 17% to 8% of the total.

• Vegetation fires were 30% of the total. We were fortunate not to experience more fires of this type during last summer’s dry conditions.

I have commended the Members for their team spirit, for striving for such high standards of performance in all of their duties and for their selfless, volunteer service to our Community.

W.A Butzbach (Bill),
Chief Fire Officer