Dave Mollard's Change is Constant: Community needs to look after its firefighters

Climbing the Sky Tower in full firefighter kit is hard work for the body and mind but the feeling you get when you reach the observation deck makes it worth the mahi. Photo / Supplied

OPINION:

If you're reading this on Saturday or beyond, hopefully I have just completed climbing to the top of the Sky Tower wearing my full firefighter kit.

I'm a member of the Palmerston North Rural Volunteer Brigade, and we have a proud history of not just fighting fires and pumping out floodwater but helping the community in a variety of other ways.

This weekend a bunch of us are joining hundreds of our fellow firefighters in raising money for Leukaemia and Blood Cancer New Zealand by climbing more than 1200 steps. It's hard work for the body and mind but the feeling you get when you reach the observation deck makes it worth the mahi.

The camaraderie of all the firefighters makes it a really special event. Professional urban, military, volunteers, forestry and rural firefighters all working together to get the job done. It's the same on the fire ground where different brigades work side by side as one well-drilled team.

More than 80 per cent of firefighters are volunteers. When the siren in Bunnythorpe, Ashhurst, Feilding and hundreds of other small towns across our motu goes off, these volunteers drop whatever they are doing and rush to the station, not really knowing what they are going to encounter and how long it will take.

Being a city-based volunteer brigade it takes us longer to get our truck out the door but most of these crews manage to get their rigs with lights and sirens on the road in less than six minutes, because with a fire, a crash or a heart attack those first minutes are the most important.

Firefighters expose themselves to risks at every callout, both mental and physical. For the volunteers in busy stations, they may get called to these kinds of incidents 10 or 12 times a month, while professional firefighters do this on a daily basis.

Some risks are in your face and we have plans to deal with them, but other silent, hidden risks are not so easy to deal with. The emotional toll of connecting with victims in a state of physical and mental stress can slowly build up.

The physical toll of breathing in smoke and other fumes is also not fully understood and tracked. Part of the industrial action the professional firefighters are currently engaged in is to demand better care for their long-term hauora. For all firefighters, we do it because we want to serve our community, but we do ask that the community looks after us as well.

• Dave Mollard is a Palmerston North community worker and social commentator.