Wellington hostel fire: Firefighters ‘pretty cut up’ they couldn’t rescue more people as second ladder truck unavailable

By RNZ

Firefighters lacked a second giant ladder truck to fight the deadly Newtown fire because it was broken down yet again.

Their sole 32-metre ladder truck with a basket on the end rescued five people off the roof of Loafers Lodge.

It did a “fantastic” job of making “early” rescues, Fire and Emergency region manager Bruce Stubbs told Morning Report today.

But firefighters, who had been confronted by screaming people in a lodge stairwell, yelling at them to “save their mates who are up on the top floor”, did not have the second truck, Newtown 225, to call on.

It has hardly been on a job in more than two years, and not since it froze up at a house fire in Kilbirnie in February 2022.

Asked by Morning Report if having this second truck would have helped the rescue, Stubbs said: “I don’t know.”

He said it had “mechanical problems” and they were working to get it back on the road.

Loafers Lodge after the deadly fire that swept through the building on Adelaide Rd, Wellington. Photo / George Heard

A senior officer told RNZ of concerns raised with him straight after the fire by seniors there, about two junior firefighters “pretty cut up” about not being able to save everyone.

He added there would be others - and expressed anger at the state of the aerial ladder-truck fleet which the union has complained about for years.

He said firefighters advised him even the smaller ladder truck - with half as long a ladder - that was used at Loafers, was labouring and had to be “nursed” to make it through.

After the house fire last year, Stubbs told RNZ: “There are no concerns for public safety.

“It is rare for an aerial [truck] to aid the escape of people from a burning building.

“People use existing inbuilt escape routes and buildings are designed with fire safety measures, such as smoke and fire detection systems, sprinkler systems and protected egress pathways.”

Investigations are under way at Adelaide Rd into why the fire appeared to have spread quickly despite the building meeting current safety standards, and into what went wrong with the evacuation.

The ideal for firefighters would have been to have had two of the largest 32-metre ladder trucks each covering two sides of Loafers Lodge.

Instead, a Type 4 truck with a 17-metre ladder, poached from the Hutt Valley well before this blaze to make up for Newtown 225′s loss, was on Adelaide Rd blasting water through the windows.

Last March, Stubbs told RNZ: “Our firefighters are adept at adjusting their tactical approaches based on what they are faced with at the time.”

Inside, crews made for the top floor, hauling high-rise equipment with them.

When they got there, multiple rooms were already on fire and it did not appear to be a survivable situation.

They felt the heat of black smoke that reached from floor to ceiling, backing up due to the lack of ventilation - a particularly risky situation - until, it seemed, a roof failure let some of the smoke escape.

Outside, meanwhile, the Type 4 appliance shouldering a lot of the pumping, was having problems, the senior officer said. “We had to nurse that truck through,” he said he was told by those running the truck.

Speaking about FENZ’s resourcing, Greens Party co-leader James Shaw, who like other parties’ leaders later in Parliament voiced sympathies for whānau and praise for the quick action of emergency responders, also said: “What kind of country are we ... where our firefighters lack, or [are] at risk of not showing up with the most basic of equipment to be able to fight these kinds of events.”

Late last year, firefighters lifted a ban they had imposed on Newtown 225 over fears for their own safety, because crew had been stuck in the ladder-cage when it froze up.

FENZ eventually agreed to the recommendations from an investigation into the Kilbirnie fire, to improve the management of its ageing fleet.

However, it has a backlog of problems with cracks on some Type 3 trucks, and long wait times to buy new, larger trucks.