A South Otago brigade is mourning the death of one of its firefighters at the weekend, just 14 months after losing another volunteer to a tractor accident.<\/p>\n
Clutha Valley Volunteer Fire Brigade chief fire officer Richard Hunter said his crew were in shock after attending the accident on Clutha Valley Rd in the early hours of Saturday.<\/p>\n
Police confirmed one person died after emergency services were called to a single vehicle crash around 1.55am Saturday.<\/p>\n
The driver was the sole occupant of the vehicle, which went off the road between Craig Rd and Allangrange Rd.<\/p>\n
The tragic death comes just 14 months after the brigade lost Blair Halder, 41.<\/p>\n
Mr Hunter said his crew were still talking about the loss of Mr Halder, and were struggling to process a second blow so soon.<\/p>\n
He said the crew member who died at the weekend was a “great guy”.<\/p>\n
“He was a great guy, very passionate for life, for his family, for the brigade. He loved his family, and we can\u2019t express to them how sorry we are for this massive loss.”<\/p>\n
He said Fire & Emergency NZ was helping the brigade address the tragedy.<\/p>\n
“FENZ are great at wrapping round [the team]. It\u2019s been less than 48 hours really, so we\u2019re all still processing.”<\/p>\n
Farmer and volunteer firefighter Blair Halder died following a tractor accident on a Kononi property in April last year.<\/p>\n
At the time, Mr Hunter described him as a “genuinely good guy” who had his community at heart.<\/p>\n
Mr Halder was a volunteer firefighter for about 23 years, serving first in Dipton then, from 2015, in Clutha Valley, where he was brigade secretary.<\/p>\n
The latest tragedy comes just two months after the brigade celebrated its 50th jubilee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A South Otago brigade is mourning the death of one of its firefighters at the weekend, just 14…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-444376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444376","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=444376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}