Martin Campbell: Firefighters Union Vice President on the equipment failure that left firefighters trapped during North Shore fire

The Firefighters Union says a recent life-threatening equipment failure at Thursday's massive North Shore Recycling Plant blaze wasn't the first.

Two firefighters needed rescue when their aerial unit broke down above the dangerous Wairau Valley blaze.

Vice president Martin Campbell says this again highlights that the fleet is ageing and poorly-maintained.

"In the days leading up to it, there were several faults with it - but unfortunately, we just don't have the trucks out there to replace it with and they don't have the time and money to make sure it's working properly."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ever duples.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
So the Professional Firefighters Union has called for action after
two firefighters got stuck up a ladder above that recycling
plant fire in Auckland last week. What happened as the
pair couldn't get down because the truck broke and so
they had to be rescued by the second truck that
was there. Now, Martin Campbell is the vice president of
the Professional Firefighters Union.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Ha, Martin, yeah, get out here.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
The house going good, thank you. What happened to the truck?

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Well, for whatever reason, the fire truck has broke down
in the middle of this major fire that happened on
Thursday night, and as you mentioned, the two firefighters were
stranded and had to be rescued. So all emergency back
ups set normally kicking when the truck breaks down unfortunately
also failed, so those firefighters had to be rescued. So

(00:42):
now we're hoping that a full and frank investigation will
be done and why that happened and how it could
stop it again.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Has this particular truck had trouble before?

Speaker 1 (00:52):
The truck has had had troubles all the time. In
the days leading up to it, there were several faults
with it, but unfortunately we just don't have the trucks
out there to replace it with. And we don't have it,
they don't have the time to be ables of dispose
spend some time and money actually making sure it's working properly.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
What would have happened if there wasn't a second truck there,
a second truck that came to that just happened to
be there and happened to be able to get to
the height that was required.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
What would have happened, Well, I hate to think worst
case scenario, those firefighters could have got severely burnt or
overcome completely with the tossic smoke. You know, we would
have had to do some crazy scenarios, well, throw ropes
up to them and they had to repel down or
something silly like that. So it's bigg as belief as
to what potentially could have happened. Now.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
I know that you guys have some concerns because after
the Sky City fire, there was supposed to be some
sort of a draft strategy for dealing with these kinds
of trucks, and that's never got out of the draft stage.
Would that have made a difference.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, certainly the strategy that the review from the Sky
City fire as she recommended the organization do with haste
and still hasn't done six years later. Would have given
the organization their background, esther where its priorities actually need
to lay, how many of these trucks they need to buy,
where the trucks need to be located, and what type

(02:13):
of trucks they should actually be replaced with.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, Martin, listen, thank you very much. I really appreciate
your time. That's Martin Campbell, who's obviously with the professional firefighters.
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