Record year for Te Puke Fire Brigade with 335 calls for help

Firefighters get The Mule ready to rescue a patient at Pāpāmoa Hills.

By Te Puke fire chief Dale Lindsay

Emergency calls so far this year: four.

Last year ended with the brigade having responded to a record number of calls. Our final total of 335 was the highest ever recorded, the previous highest being 329 in 2019.

As a brigade staffed entirely by volunteers, we would dearly like to see these numbers reducing, not increasing, however I guess it’s a sign of the times with the Bay of Plenty still experiencing strong population growth.

We have responded to four calls so far this year - one false alarm, a motor vehicle crash on Quarry Rd where the car rolled down a bank some 10 metres but with no serious injuries.

We also attended a car fire on No 2 Rd, plus a medical call.

The medical call resulted in a great outcome when we were called to Poplar Lane, below Pāpāmoa Hills.

We responded with our ute with medical gear and fortunately decided to throw in “The Mule”, a single wheel stretcher carrier we purchased to assist with extractions from difficult terrain.

A man had suffered a cardiac arrest up on the Pāpāmoa Hills track and we were able to assist St John in achieving an all-too-rare win, with the patient sitting up and talking to ambulance staff by the time he arrived at the hospital.

The Mule enabled a far more comfortable and less physically taxing extraction from the location than would have been the case without it.

It is an expensive piece of kit, but it has already paid for itself several times over on the few occasions we’ve needed it.

Check out the Brigade Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Te.Puke.Fire.Brigade.