Fire and Emergency New Zealand senior station officer Michael Manning. Photo / RNZ, Marika Khabazi
By Phil Pennington of RNZ
Firefighters have described clashing with police over who should rescue a woman trapped on a cliff above the sea north of Auckland last month.
A couple walking on the beach had taken refuge from the advancing tide but she became stuck at Tāwharanui Peninsula near Warkworth on the evening of March 23.
A call log showed police suggested that Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s lines rescue team stand down, even though it had responded much faster than their team.
“Essentially we’ve had the victim stuck on the side of the cliff, clinging to a flax bush for an extended period of time needlessly,” Fire and Emergency team leader Michael Manning said.
Police waited for half an hour to alert Fire and Emergency when the incident call came in at 7.21pm.
The logs show that despite this, the specialist team of firefighters skilled with ropes and harnesses got there well before a police team and hoisted the woman up.
“She was in an extremely precarious position,” Manning said.
Manning and colleagues said such choke points were recurring and police needed to sort it out with Fire and Emergency.
Decisions were being made “at the expense of the New Zealand public who require a capability to be able to intervene in their greatest time of need”, said a lines rescue trainer Josh Nicholls, speaking as an Auckland union representative.
Police said it was up to them as lead agency to deploy resources – they considered using the Eagle police chopper, Coastguard and ropes – and this rescue went by the book.
“We were and rightly remained the lead agency” at Tāwharanui.
Internal Fire and Emergency emails showed that last year it had talks with police in which they agreed several rescues had been sub-par and a Fire and Emergency deputy national commander said he had been calling on agencies together to work it out. Nicholls said nothing had changed since.
On March 23, both police and Fire and Emergency sent lines rescue teams to Tāwharanui peninsula.
Call logs show police took two hours and 49 minutes to get their crew there.
Fire and Emergency took just an hour and four minutes.
Once police alerted Fire and Emergency at 7.51pm, Manning’s crew took seven minutes to set off. A quarter of an hour later, police were still discussing deploying their team.
As they drove to the peninsula an hour north from Auckland, Manning said they were told to stand down.
“Police have put some messages across the shared channel ... stating that they will be the lead agency for the event and that they were going to try and mobilise the police search and rescue team ... and we should stand down from the call.”
The police told RNZ their log showed their search and rescue (SAR) co-ordinator advising Fire and Emergency at 8.03pm to “stand down if not deploying”.
At 8.04pm the co-ordinator advised “police leading. Police ropes team will deploy”.
Manning said a Fire and Emergency duty commander also told them to stand down.
His response? “Absolutely not ... the woman is still trapped on the side of the cliff and is far from being rescued.”
Manning’s six-person lines rescue team got to the carpark at the peninsula road-end at 8.55pm.
This was still about half an hour’s walk away from the cliff top through locked gates.
“You’ve got to appreciate, mate this is a pretty time-critical rescue,” Manning said. “This lady had been on the side of the cliff now for about two hours exposed to the elements and I needed to get my team forward to effect the rescue.”
It was not until over an hour later, at 10.10pm, that the police rescue van got to the carpark. The team had only two lines rescuers among its seven members.
At 10.18pm the Fire and Emergency team was waiting to abseil down to the woman.
“It was howling a gale,” Manning said. “She was wet because her and her husband had been enveloped by the tide at one stage.
“She was on a 50m cliff, approximately 20m from the top.”
Her phone had helped pinpoint her position.
Several volunteer firefighters and three non-lines team police officers who had arrived between 8 and 8.30pm had found her first but they needed a specialist rescue crew.
It was after 11 when the Fire and Emergency crew hoisted her up, getting her to the road end at 12.22am.
The call log mentioned “onset of hypothermia” but police said she did not need to go to hospital.
Manning said they heard the next day from their communications centre that police said they might simply not tell Fire and Emergency at all about such jobs in future.
The police told RNZ they had no record of this.
“This comment does not reflect police’s position.”
RNZ asked Fire and Emergency and police for interviews but they instead issued statements.
Fire and Emergency said its crews responded promptly and committed significant resources at Tāwharanui.
It added that incidents could be complex, and police were the lead agency and responsible for requesting help from Fire and Emergency.
Police said they led all “category 1” operations (the vast bulk of search-and-rescues). “This gives police the lead in determining what assets are tasked and forming the rescue operation,” they said.
They looked at sending a chopper but at 7.30pm the police Eagle helicopter said the weather was too bad for it to go. The Eagle is primarily a surveillance machine.
They looked at sending the police patrol boat and also talked to the Coastguard but at 7.50pm the latter said conditions were “not great” and it could not reach the woman.
They alerted Fire and Emergency at 7.51pm, but then police co-ordinators determined they did not need the agency’s help and “this was passed onto the Fire and Emergency lines team. The team advised they were going to continue on to the informant’s location.
“The SAR on-scene co-ordinator was happy to involve the Fire and Emergency ropes team once at the location, as although not required they were already there.”
This was all according to standard procedures, police said.
But Manning questioned how police waiting so long to notify Fire and Emergency in the first place or trying to stand them down could be a good standard – he called it “a choke point”.
Police told RNZ there might be opportunities to improve.
They and Fire and Emergency had “committed to meeting further to assess whether there are opportunities to improve inter-agency communications or clarity of communications when one agency is seeking to establish available resources as part of deployment planning”.
The record of events on March 23 showed police decided early on that it was not an advanced lines rescue – before a single officer or firefighter got to the cliff. They said Fire and Emergency acknowledged this.
The woman’s husband told them by phone at 7.46pm about being “in good spirits, calm and well-equipped for the weather, has food and drink”.
Both Nicholls and Manning called for talks to sort it out.
They said police should stay in charge and lead searches, but that when responders knew just where someone was, like at Tāwharanui, it was a rescue not a search, and Fire and Emergency specialist rescuers would often be there faster.
“It’s the old adage, it’s better to be looking at capability than looking for capability at the expense of the person that is in distress,” Nicholls said.
“It’s all about the welfare of the victim at the end of the day, right?” Manning said.
“It doesn’t matter who does the job. The person needs to be rescued.”