{"id":121712,"date":"2025-11-06T20:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T20:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/121712\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T20:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T20:57:07","slug":"firefighter-training-facility-shut-down-over-structural-safety-fears-carcinogenic-smoke-risk-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/121712\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefighter training facility shut down over structural safety fears, carcinogenic smoke risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

The provisional improvement notice, or PIN, in force at Rotorua states that Fire and Emergency<\/a> \u201cis knowingly exposing workers to harm\u201d from the risk of the structural failure of the steel fire cells, and \u201ccarcinogen exposure from uncontrolled release of smoke\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe facility has not address [sic] the breakdown of the integrity of the burn cells,\u201d the official notice said.<\/p>\n

Stanley said the containers had warped and had holes, the reburner had mostly never worked and the whole big building leaked smoke out across the training ground and into classrooms.<\/p>\n

\u2018We can\u2019t protect them\u2019<\/p>\n

It was a two-pronged threat, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne is the immediate health and safety concern for our firefighters<\/a> who are exposed to carcinogenic smoke when they don\u2019t need to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe second is our firefighters will end their course and go into real-world environments in their fire brigades in the metropolitan centres and they may not have a thorough understanding of how to behave in live fire,\u201d said Stanley, who is also national president of the Professional Firefighters\u2019 Union<\/a>, which is in a long-running industrial dispute with Fire and Emergency NZ.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t protect them from what the real world looks like.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can\u2019t do that, then that puts our firefighters and the community at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unable to complete training at Rotorua, the latest cohort of recruits are instead headed next week to Auckland Airport\u2019s live-fire facility, RNZ was told.<\/p>\n

Stanley said a far better option of sending them to Adelaide was set up, then cancelled.<\/p>\n

Repairs did not work \u2013 PIN<\/p>\n

The PIN said Fire and Emergency NZ was notified \u201con multiple occasions\u201d but had not properly monitored the cells\u2019 integrity and that \u201crepairs that have been carried out have not fixed the integrity of the burn cells\u201d.<\/p>\n

Recruits in the grounds and classrooms outside the cells did not know they might breathe toxic smoke but Fire and Emergency NZ did, said Stanley. Asked if that was an ethical issue, he said, \u201cYes, it is, yep.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was acting as the manager of training at that time, that was my third day, and that was one of my first actions, was to close the live-fire cells.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually fixing them was well outside his control, he added.<\/p>\n

\"NZNZ Army firefighters in live fire exercises. Photo \/ Maddox Photography NZ<\/p>\n

Contingency planning <\/p>\n

Fire and Emergency late on Thursday night said that once the notice was issued, contingency planning looked at options to deliver the current recruit course.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we have restrictions on our live fire training capability, the planning we have undertaken to deliver the current recruits\u2019 course demonstrated our ability to continue critical training,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has taken significant effort by our [NZPFU] live-fire specialists, safety health and wellbeing, and learning and development leadership teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fire and Emergency NZ routinely celebrates online about the two dozen recruits who graduate at Rotorua from a 12-week course, usually run four times a year.<\/p>\n

Fire and Emergency NZ\u2019s only other live-fire site at Woolston was also shut down over smoke leaking out, early this year.<\/p>\n

This left the country without live-fire training capacity.<\/p>\n

\u2018Embarrassing\u2019<\/p>\n

Stanley said Fire and Emergency NZ chief executive Kerry Gregory cancelled sending the latest Rotorua cohort to Adelaide at the \u201c11th hour\u201d, after all the recruits had got passports.<\/p>\n

Training at Auckland was a far inferior option to Adelaide, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s embarrassing that we have to go to Auckland Airport.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s embarrassing that as New Zealand\u2019s only statutory fire and emergency-mandated organisation, we can\u2019t teach our people one of the greatest risks that they face every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rotorua was labelled \u201cstate-of-the art\u201d in 2012, a \u201cmock town built from concrete and galvanised steel\u201d, five years after the $7 million training centre was established. The Defence Force in June this year also called it a \u201cstate-of-the-art facility\u201d; its firefighters were training there at the time.<\/p>\n

But Stanley said his trainers reported its degradation over several years \u201cwithout any additional resource\u201d.<\/p>\n

The steel cell floors had buckled so they were undulating \u2013 \u201cThe danger is in that the floor shifts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RecruitsRecruits are now training at Auckland Airport’s facility after plans to send them to Adelaide were cancelled. Photo \/ 123rf<\/p>\n

Rebuild suggested<\/p>\n

The PIN listed recommendations made by a health and safety representative at Rotorua. One was that if Fire and Emergency NZ could not put engineering controls in place at the live-fire cells, they should be redesigned and rebuilt.<\/p>\n

Stanley said resourcing was up to the chief executive, who knew the cells needed rebuilding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s easier to kick the can down the road than it is to do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Woolston, a tender went out in April to build an extraction system \u201cto better capture smoke from all containers and minimise fugitive releases that do not currently exit via the chimney\u201d. That work is still going on and the PIN remains in force.<\/p>\n

Fire and Emergency NZ has now embarked on a restructure at least at corporate level, to try to save $50m a year; Gregory told staff it had to slow or stop some activities, but in public statements the agency said the change would not impact frontline staffing.<\/p>\n

Stanley expressed alarm at the savings push.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to get an answer from anyone about what structural changes [they] need to make,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to rebuild an aeroplane as we\u2019re flying it, and it\u2019s putting us in a really precarious situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said management\u2019s plan at Rotorua appeared to be to swap out the live-fire steel containers for new ones, but trainers had told him this was not good enough.<\/p>\n

The union in July said one health and safety issue behind its calls for strike action was Fire and Emergency NZ\u2019s failure to maintain live-fire training facilities.<\/p>\n

This had \u201cresulted in only one facility nationwide leaving some firefighters without live fire training for many years\u201d, the PFU said.<\/p>\n

– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The provisional improvement notice, or PIN, in force at Rotorua states that Fire and Emergency \u201cis knowingly exposing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85432,6097,11163,28164,53851,111,43,139,69,1523,31341,21037,7192,6302,6753,3948,85431,8812],"class_list":{"0":"post-121712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-carcinogenic","9":"tag-down","10":"tag-facility","11":"tag-fears","12":"tag-firefighter","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-over","18":"tag-pennington","19":"tag-phil","20":"tag-risk","21":"tag-safety","22":"tag-shut","23":"tag-smoke","24":"tag-structural","25":"tag-training"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}