The city of Hamilton, in the Waikato Region of New Zealand is served by a full time, paid staffed, fire brigade operating from three fire stations and supported by a volunteer brigade from a fourth station. These components all together make up the resources of the Hamilton Fire District of the New Zealand Fire Service. The Hamilton District itself is part of the Waikato Fire Area which in turn forms part of the wider Bay-Waikato Fire Region. The city's three full time fire stations are equipped with the following resources:
Hamilton Central
HAMI 411 - the front running Heavy Pump appliance
HAMI 412 - the second running Heavy Pump appliance, cross-manned* with HAMI 415 as required
HAMI 413 - the call-back Heavy Pump appliance, manned by off-duty staff as required
HAMI 415 - the Aerial appliance ("Snorkel"), cross-manned* with HAMI 412 as required
HAMI 4118 - Hazardous Materials & Command Unit, manned* as required
HAMI 4126 - Incident Support Vehicle (combination Hose Layer and Heavy Rescue), manned* as required
HAMI 4129 - general purpose utility, used by all district staff for run-about purposes
* Cross-manned, or manned as required means that the crew on station respond in whichever appliance is required to attend the call rather than there being a crew allocated to every appliance. Chartwell Sub-station
CHAR 427 - front running Pump/Rescue Tender
Pukete Sub-station
PUKE 431 - front running Heavy Pump appliance
The Hamilton brigade also administers 1 wholly-volunteer station in the settlement of Whitikahu, approximately 20 minutes North-East of the City. This is what is known as an Auxiliary Fire Brigade as the station does not constitute a full Urban Fire District and they are administered by another brigade. The Whitikahu brigade has one Medium Pump appliance, WHIT 341.
Until the beginning of 2006, the Hamilton Fire District also included 1 Medium Pump appliance crewed by volunteer firefighters and stationed in the old mechanics workshops behind the paid staff station at Chartwell. More comprehensive information follows in the article below.
Hamilton Volunteers
The Hamilton Volunteer Fire Brigade, informally known as the "Hamilton Vollies" or "Chartwell Vollies", are taking a new direction in surrendering the operational firefighting role and instead providing dedicated technical and logisitical Operational Support to the Hamilton Fire District and greater Waikato Fire Area. We operate from our own station on Crosby Road in the suburb of Chartwell, located behind the paid staff station, and currently crew one specialist Operational Support appliance, CHAR 4226. Plans are well underway to commission a second appliance during 2009 / 2010 which will mean we will be only the third support brigade in the country running more than one appliance.
While full time paid staff still undertake traditional firefighting and rescue work within the city the volunteers now concentrate on providing the specific roles of Emergency Lighting & Power Generation, Heavy Salvage, Scene Management, Urban Search & Rescue, Flood/Storm/Disaster work and Civil Defence assistance. Planning is also underway for personnel to be able to also assist with manning the new combined HAZMAT/Command Unit, reducing the need to use frontline firefighters in this role. In a nutshell, we undertake any variety of tasks required at an incident aside from directly attacking a fire.
The NZ Fire Service has provided a custom converted Isuzu Elf truck and we are fundraising within the community to build and commission a second vehicle to become our emergency lighting plant. The volunteers have an allocated establishment of 15 members and for the first time in years we are maintaining this number following intense recruiting over the last 3 years. As of September 2010 our ranks consist of:
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