\u201cWe were hoping they were okay, we weren\u2019t sure at that stage, [the owner] had tried to get down to them earlier but realised that it was far too dangerous, given the steep cliff,\u201d Moore said.<\/p>\n
Moore said the crews set up a line rescue plan and sent down experienced firefighter Gary Anderson to retrieve the uninjured dogs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were fine down the bottom and from there we worked on bringing them up … they weren\u2019t too happy about being stuck down there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Operating in the night added further difficulty to the rescue, he said.<\/p>\n
Rocky and Stormy were uninjured by the fall. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Moore said the owner was relieved to be reunited with his dogs and the crew were proud of their efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fantastic, we wouldn\u2019t want to have left the dogs down there, especially when you\u2019re unsure of what state they are in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be pretty hard to leave them there – that\u2019s not something anyone wants to do at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rescue took a total of about five hours, with crews arriving back at the station around 11.30pm.<\/p>\n
While rescuing the dogs, two separate calls needed to be attended in Whanganui.<\/p>\n
\u201cLine rescue jobs are quite labour-intensive, when the crews are sent out of town, we cover town with off-duty staff,\u201d Moore said.<\/p>\n
Moore said it is becoming \u201cmore and more common\u201d to get other call-outs while occupied with another incident.<\/p>\n
Those two calls would have gone unanswered had it not been for off-duty staff, some of whom had just worked a day shift, to leave their families and respond.<\/p>\n
Moore said that is why the NZ Professional Firefighters Union [NZPFU] have launched a public petition for a full inquiry into Fire and Emergency.<\/p>\n
Fin Ocheduszko Brown is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe were hoping they were okay, we weren\u2019t sure at that stage, [the owner] had tried to get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[112052,74,1558,12636,9213,6097,3592,38403,7572,2082,305,15220,3180,111,43,139,69,24265,8527,18560,8528,1237,1883],"class_list":{"0":"post-365734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-30m","9":"tag-after","10":"tag-been","11":"tag-cliff","12":"tag-dogs","13":"tag-down","14":"tag-fall","15":"tag-falling","16":"tag-firefighters","17":"tag-for","18":"tag-have","19":"tag-line","20":"tag-near","21":"tag-new-zealand","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-newzealand","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-perform","26":"tag-rescue","27":"tag-rescued","28":"tag-trapped","29":"tag-two","30":"tag-whanganui"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365734","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=365734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}