Fire station with view keeps brigade moving

FIREFIGHTERS: (From left) Wanganui Fire Service's Ian Tanner, Shane Dudley and Glenn Haden line up with rural fire crew members Gavin Price, Peter Tantrum and Scott Wylie. Their combined vehicle fleet is at rear. PHOTO/ STUART MUNRO 170414WCSMFIRE-STATION1.JPG

Wanganui firefighters have christened their temporary base in Gilberd St "The Riverview Fire Station", area commander Bernie Rush says.

They handed their Maria Place station over to a $1.5 million renovation project last Monday. While W&W Construction is at work there for the next eight to nine months, their main base will be the former Molten Metals building in Gilberd St, Castlecliff.

At high tide it has a fine view over stopbanks to the Whanganui River.

There's an office at the front, a communications room in the middle and fire engines are lined up in the large roofed area at the back.

Overnight accommodation for the crews is in a row of 10 portable cabins at the side, next to the railway tracks. Mr Rush said they could be noisy when wagons were being loaded at night, but there were usually only two trains a day.

About a quarter of the service's callouts are from the Castlecliff end of Wanganui. The first few after the shift happened to be very close by.

"You could see them from here," Mr Rush said.

The service intends to have fire engines in the central city from 3-10pm, the busiest time of day, to get to callouts in Aramoho faster. About 8 per cent of calls came from there, and Mr Rush said the service would only be two or three minutes slower to reach them.

Fire engines can park at the Wanganui Resource Recovery Centre and the New Zealand Defence Force headquarters in Maria Place during the day. They will also be parked outside the Jetts Gym in Victoria Ave sometimes, because the firefighters have daily fitness sessions there.

The fire engines were also tending to move around more because the firefighters have been busy installing free smoke alarms and doing safety checks.