Source: Radio New Zealand
Firefighters say they no longer have confidence in their ageing fleet vehicles. RNZ / Evie Richardson
An inquiry into the state of Fire and Emergency’s fire trucks has heard its troubles go deeper than thought and require a wider investigation.
The parliamentary select committee inquiry was triggered by MPs who were angry at getting mixed messages from Fire and Emergency (FENZ) amid truck breakdowns and new trucks not being put on the road fast enough.
Ray Deacon of the Taxpayers’ Union said FENZ’s lack of asset management had been “astonishing”.
“Failures to control expenditure, failure to efficiently construct rural fire stations, failure to efficiently manage assets, all suggest a major failure of governance by the board and Department of Internal Affairs,” Deacon told MPs on Wednesday.
He disputed FENZ’s contention that it had inherited fire trucks from rural brigades that were worse than expected in the 2017 merger of urban and rural services. Deacon said that did not wash with what was on record, and if it were true, why the cost-benefit analysis conducted at the time did not raise it.
“Would the merger actually even have gone ahead had the actual costs that have been incurred subsequent to merger been known at the time? I very much doubt it,” he said.
Other submitters also called for a wider inquiry, among them Alan Collett, speaking on behalf of the Professional Firefighters’ Union’s Wellington branch.
Citing the Loafers Lodge fire that killed five people in Wellington in 2023, Collett said when trucks broke down, crews could adopt different tactics, but options got more and more limited as time ticked by.
He said at the Loafers fire, the shorter ladder of a truck standing in for a broken-down long-ladder Newtown truck prevented firefighters from rescuing people jumping onto a roof on the south side of the building.
Collett pointed to other weaknesses, citing an unreleased review within FENZ that he suggested showed “systematic inconsistencies” in training.
Another submitter, Adriana de Souza, told the inquiry she had witnessed firefighters’ commitment to the job at a lodge fire in the central Auckland suburb of Parnell in 2024, and said they deserved better.
It was the second public hearing of the inquiry, which is ongoing.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/mps-told-investigation-needed-into-state-of-fire-truck-fleet/