A fire truck broke down while firefighters were responding to a call last month. Photo / NZME
I vividly remember the morning I realised my neighbour’s house was on fire.
I was getting ready for work when I saw smoke rising from their roof.
For a few seconds my brain tried to normalise what I was seeing.
Then I watched the curtains pulled upward, sucked into the ceiling as they melted. My hands were shaking when I dialled 111.
I ran outside to meet the crews and felt immediate relief as I heard sirens.
When they arrived, there was no panic. Just calm, professional urgency.
The cause was identified as a fridge, an everyday appliance you’d never expect to destroy a home.
Because firefighters arrived quickly, my neighbours didn’t lose everything.
They lost belongings and had to move out briefly, but they still had a home and stability.
That difference is everything.
That truth gets lost when response is discussed as if it’s only policy and budgets.
In an emergency, every second matters and can be the difference between a survivable crisis and a catastrophe.
Whanganui saw the job done in the Lismore Forest fire, where rapid response helped contain what could have become far worse.
I saw it that morning from my front lawn, still in shock.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about it as reports continue of ageing frontline fire vehicles, breakdowns, and unreliable equipment.
This week, attention focused on the South Mole fire, where one engine reportedly broke down while responding and another was already off the road for repairs, adding an estimated two to three minutes to response time.
That image of Whanganui firefighters pushing a broken-down truck says it all.
When things fail, firefighters don’t walk away. They keep going, because the community can’t afford for them not to.
I see every day what it costs when the system doesn’t work.
This isn’t criticism of firefighters. If anything, it’s the opposite. It’s respect for what we ask them to do, and a warning about what happens when we keep asking more while giving them less.
The firefighters’ union has been raising concerns about breakdowns and delayed replacements.
If the response vehicle can’t be relied upon to arrive, everything else becomes secondary: training, strategy, even dedication and courage.
Systems don’t stay strong by accident. They stay strong through planned renewal, preventative maintenance, and replacing assets before failure becomes normal. In a cost-of-living crisis, failure costs more than prevention.
The pattern points to structural underinvestment.
Fire and Emergency has said it is planning to invest approximately $20 million over the next five years to replace older vehicles across the country.
A modern emergency response service depends on vehicles that work, supported by maintenance capacity and a replacement programme that stays ahead of failure.
When one link is weak, the whole system becomes fragile – and it shows up under pressure.
This is also a question of regional equity.
When appliances fail in a city, another crew may be minutes away. When they fail in a region, the delay could be the difference between contained and catastrophic.
If a fire destroys your home and you have savings, stable work, and family support, you will still suffer – but you will recover.
If you don’t, a house fire can be a tipping point into long-term instability.
Working in the community sector, I see how quickly one event can unravel someone’s life, and how often it’s dismissed as bad luck or bad choices rather than recognised as the predictable outcome of uneven protection.
We need to ask better questions, not to attack firefighters or undermine public confidence, but to protect it.
We should be asking whether funding matches what we now expect Fire and Emergency NZ to do, especially as climate-driven emergencies become more frequent and more complex.
These shouldn’t be political questions. They’re operational, and they should have public answers. Emergency response is a public good: it must be strong, fair, and ready when it matters.
With levy reform coming, the stakes are high – but reform alone doesn’t guarantee a reliable emergency response. What matters is whether funding delivers a fleet that is fit for purpose, and equitable resilience for regions like ours.
A modern emergency response service should be built to withstand failure: vehicles off the road, stretched crews, and multiple callouts at once.
If it can’t, the problem isn’t the unlucky breakdown; it’s a system designed too close to failure.
Imagine what even a few extra minutes would have changed for my neighbours that morning.
When emergency response is weakened, the cost doesn’t disappear. It just shifts on to families and on to communities.
And it doesn’t have to be that way.
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