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Fire & Emergency New Zealand

Emergency Services Information Summary for Service Stations

To ensure we can respond to incidents involving hazardous substances promptly and safely, Fire and Emergency needs to have accurate information about those substances and where they are located.

There are over 1300 fuel retail sites (service stations) across New Zealand, an increasing number of which are unattended. On average we respond to one incident at a service station every week. We currently hold little information about individual sites that we can readily use in the event of an emergency. Emergency Response Plans (ERPs) required under Health and Safety regulations do not usually present information relevant to Fire and Emergency in a simple or easy to access form.

To address this, we have worked with the retail fuel sector to develop a simple template for emergency information (the Emergency Services Information Summary) in a standard format that operators of service stations (attended and unattended) can complete and submit to us.

The summary is designed to be accessed from the Mobility tablets in our appliances on the way to a call, so the layout of the information has been developed with that in mind.

What should be in the summary?

The summary contains just the key information we need when we respond to an incident at a service station in a concise and consistent format that can be adopted by all operators. The template includes the following sections:

  • The site picture and map show the location of the site at an appropriate scale to enable responders to quickly identify adjacent locations within a radius of around 500m that could be affected by smoke from a fire. You should identify sensitive sites such as schools, hospitals, residential care facilities or areas where there may be large numbers of people, such as supermarkets.
  • The safety features and site drainage show the layout of the site with the location of equipment, fuel storage, fuel dispensers, site drainage and safety equipment including emergency shutdowns.
    It is imperative that these plans are good quality and legible at A4 size to be usable by our crews. You may need to create a new diagram specifically for this purpose.
  • Fire hydrants and stormwater drainage shows the location of firefighting water supplies as well as stormwater mains. The information in this plan is generally available on publicly available local authority mapping systems.
    In particular, you should identify below where the stormwater ultimately discharges to, e.g. waterway, foreshore, etc. This is so that if there is any overflow from the site into drains, responders can take appropriate action to contain it and protect the environment.
  • Emergency Response Procedures show the signage and instructions displayed for customers and staff in the event of an emergency – so we know what you are telling them to do.

Preparing summaries for your sites

We strongly recommend that all service station operators develop summaries based on this format for all their sites (attended and unattended) and send them to us. They should be submitted in pdf format.

We will upload them to our Station Management System (SMS) which holds all our building information. They can then be accessed electronically by our crews on the way to the site.

Does the summary replace an ERP?

No, preparing a summary does not exempt the PCBU from their duty to prepare and implement an ERP in accordance with sections 5.7 to 5.9 of the HSW (Hazardous Substances) Regulations 2017.

However the summary can form an appendix to an ERP for the site and it will contain all the relevant information Fire and Emergency looks for when reviewing an ERP. It therefore provides an effective and efficient means of meeting the intent of section 5.10 of the regulations, to make ERPs ‘available’ to emergency services (in respect of Fire and Emergency specifically).

Fire and Emergency still retains the ability under section 5.11 to review ERPs and make recommendations as appropriate in accordance with regulation 5.11(1).

What else do I need to do?

Not all our appliances carry tablets so some may not be able to access the summary on-line. In addition to sending the summary to us electronically, a hard copy should also be held on the site in an accessible location.

All Service Stations are required to have an evacuation procedure under the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fire Safety, Evacuation Procedures, and Evacuation Schemes) Regulations 2018. Some are also required to have an Evacuation Scheme approved by Fire and Emergency. This mostly applies to those sites that cross the threshold for Hazardous Substances stored as part of Section 75 of the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act 2017. (Note below ground fuel storage is not counted in this, however substances such as LPG cylinders are.)

More information about evacuation procedures and evacuation schemes is available here.

If you have questions

For any questions about the template or the summaries, please contact Responseplans@fireandemergency.nz