The Whitianga Volunteer Fire Brigade responded to the crash, but took to social media to ask the public for empathy after being confronted by some members of the public at the scene. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen tragedy strikes within our community like yesterday, the first point of call is often our volunteer fire brigade,\u201d the volunteer brigade said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese men and women drop everything during their fulltime jobs, their families, their routines to answer the call for help.\u201d<\/p>\n
The brigade said emergencies were chaotic, stressful and sometimes terrifying, and they close roads or secure scenes to keep everyone safe. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat saddened our people out at the event yesterday was the lack of empathy from others and the anger directed at them. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not who we are. Yes, life is stressful at the moment and we are all going through something, but when tragedy strikes, this is the time to stop just for a moment, breathe in and think outside of ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The brigade said community was about pulling together and helping those in times of need. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll we ask is this \u2013 when the team tells you to stop, wait, or take a detour, please don\u2019t be a dick. <\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t harass or yell at the volunteers on the ground. That isn\u2019t cool at all. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese men and women are selfless. They give their time, safety, and comfort so others can be safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
The brigade asked the local community for patience, empathy and humanity at scenes like that of yesterday in return for them showing up so others can be safe. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Whitianga Volunteer Fire Brigade responded to the crash, but took to social media to ask the public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1903,1081,74,13916,50960,3549,27915,11784,2079,42,43,19764,1439,90022,8229,40,38,41,39,3552,1524,62121],"class_list":["post-132656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-abuse","tag-accident","tag-after","tag-asked","tag-brigade","tag-crash","tag-empathy","tag-fatal","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-received","tag-scene","tag-sh25","tag-they","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-urges","tag-waikato","tag-whitianga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132656","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=132656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}