Sprinklers offer good value now

Sprinklers will be strongly emphasised for fire protection over the next couple of years, Northland fire chief Trevor Andrews told the Kaipara District Council.
Sprinklers were now efficient and there was a good cost benefit to their installation, he said at a council meeting in Dargaville last week. Mr Andrews led a team of officers from the New Zealand Fire and Rescue Service ("We've been rebranded") who addressed the council on firefighting issues in the area.
There are six urban volunteer fire brigades in the Kaipara district, at Dargaville, Te Kopuru, Ruawai, Maungaturoto, Kaiwaka and Mangawhai.
The brigades are manned by 129 volunteer firefighters and support staff, nine percent or about 11-12 of them women.
The council was told the brigades attended 550 incidents in the Kaipara annually, with 40 percent of callouts to scrub fires, 35 percent to motor vehicle crashes or fires and 25 percent to "other" fires.
Fifty-five percent of callouts were in urban areas and 45 percent rural.
The six Kaipara brigades have 15 vehicles - six pumping appliances, two recue tenders, three rural tankers, three support vehicles or vans, and a medical co-response vehicle based at Ruawai which can get to remote fire or accident scenes in the southern portion of the district before ambulances.
Nationally, the Fire and Rescue Service has 8000 urban and more than 3000 rural volunteer firefighters, plus 1800 paid staff.
In Northland the Whangarei Fire Brigade has paid staff and the other 27 brigades in the region are staffed by 600 volunteers, including a few more than 70 years old.
Between 1997 and 2004 there were 13 people - nine of them children - killed in fires in Northland.
A total of 11,934 Northland homes have been visited to ensure they have installed smoke alarms.
Kaipara Mayor Peter King told the firemen that volunteer firefighters were "treasured" in the Kaipara district, where they were "the backbone of our communities".
Mr King wished the firemen the best of the Christmas season, which he hoped would be "particularly quiet".
Pictured: Firemen at the Kaipara District Council meeting were, from left, Northland regional commander fire safety Mike Lister, Northland commander operations Allan Kerrisk, southern zone volunteer support officer Graham Dakin, northern zone volunteer support officer Colin Kitchen, Northland regional iwi liaison officer Willy More, and Northland regional commander Trevor Andrews.