As part of a promotional material update in line with the relaunched On Station newsletter our website will shortly be undergoing a major overhaul. Please bare with us if you notice any odd bits and pieces, we're sure you'll enjoy the final outcome.

A warm welcome to all visitors to the Hamilton Volunteer Fire Brigade website. We are sometimes referred to as the Hamilton Fire District Volunteer Unit as we are the volunteer component within the Hamilton Fire District of the New Zealand Fire Service, which is primarily served by full-time career firefighters. Our station is located behind the career staff station in the suburb of Chartwell and has the station number 42. It is a one-appliance station and our appliance callsign is Chartwell 4226, however we will be upgrading to two appliances very soon! Our brigade ceased carrying out traditional firefighting roles in early 2006 and has since re-tasked to carry out specialist roles at incidents referred to as "operational support", as well as generally providing extra hands where needed. Our members are on-call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to assist the career frontline firefighters of the Hamilton Fire District, other volunteer fire brigades throughout the entire Waikato Fire Area as well as other emergency services. We aim for, and achieve, an average response time of 8 to 10 minutes from the time of pagers being activated until the time our appliance leaves the station with a minimum crew of four.

With an establishment of 15 members we function like any traditional fire brigade - running our own appliance, responding from our own fire station and being on call 24/7 through personal pagers. We do not respond directly in our private vehicles and you can easily tell us apart at an emergency because we wear blue helmets while the career firefighters wear yellow. We are not Fire Police though, who in other Fire Districts also wear blue helmets and we do not perform traffic management or refreshments - roles often associated with these units. You can learn more about our history and how we have succesfully transitioned from traditional firefighting to operational support, on the History page of this website. The HVFB are turned out anytime our appliance is requested at an incident, automatically if a 2nd Alarm is transmitted within the Hamilton turnout zone or automatically when a 3rd Alarm is transmitted anywhere else within the Waikato Fire Area. During 2010 our major goal and associated activity is commissioning our 2nd appliance which will form the basis of our Emergency Lighting Plant.

Disclaimer: This site is not that of, nor is it affliated with, the NZ Fire Service or any other organisation. It is a private site built with the aim of showcasing the services of the Hamilton Fire District volunteer personnel. All contents ©2006-2010.