Fire and Emergency thanks public for attending Newlands meeting

3 March 2020

Fire and Emergency New Zealand Chief Executive Rhys Jones has thanked members of the public who attended a meeting about the future of the Newlands Fire Station in Newlands yesterday evening.

“The meeting provided us with an opportunity to hear from the community and I am grateful to those who took the time to come along and share their views.

“The Newlands community is proud of its brigade and so are we.  We want to retain its skills and connection to the community. The question we are talking about is where is it going to operate from.”

The site of the Newlands Fire Station is required for the redevelopment of Newlands Park and the building has to be vacated by September.

Mr Jones said final decisions had still to be made, but residents of Newlands and neighbouring areas could be assured that public safety would not be compromised.

“Our Service Delivery Guidelines specify that the first career crew should get to a fire within eight minutes of the alarm being raised 90 per cent of the time.

“We are able to meet these guidelines for Newlands, Paparangi, Grenada Village and Woodridge from the Johnsonville Fire Station which is where we have proposed co-locating the Newlands brigade.”

Mr Jones said Fire and Emergency would now work through the next steps with the Newlands Volunteer Fire Brigade.

“We share the desire of the Newlands community  to retain the services of the brigade but we have to do so in a way that that does not compromise our ability to meet our obligations elsewhere. Unlike Newlands, there are some parts of the country where we cannot currently meet our Service Delivery Guidelines. They have to have first call on new investment.”

Note: the map below shows the coverage from the Johnsonville Fire Station. The areas shaded blue are the areas that can be reached within a five minute drive time from the Johnsonville Fire Station (Fire and Emergency’s Service Delivery Guidelines allow 90 seconds for call taker to get details of an incident and 90 seconds for a career crew to turnout.) The blue icons on the map mark sites that have been suggested by others as potential sites for a new fire station. None would provide additional cover over and above what is already achieved from Johnsonville Station.

The table below shows arrival times for the Newlands and Johnsonville crews to incidents attended by both brigades. The table shows the Johnsonville brigade arrives first to most fires and that when it does not arrive first, it arrives shortly after the Newlands brigade.