My Account
On November 20 last year, veteran fire fighter Nigel Capon and his wife Maria were at home reading to their grandson when his pager went off. He rose to respond as he had done many times before over the past 40 years.
But this Code Purple (cardiac arrest) was different. He recognised the address immediately, “That’s Dad’s place.”
Nigel was one of the first on the scene, but the opportunity to save his father’s life had passed. When eventually Trevor Capon, a much-respected Hibiscus Coast fire officer himself, was carried from his house to the waiting hearse, fire service and St John Ambulance officers formed an impromptu guard of honour and traffic on Hibiscus Coast Highway ground to a halt. As Nigel explained to Jannette Thompson, that respect and camaraderie exemplified why he is proud to call himself a Fire Service volunteer.
I think fire fighting is in the Capon blood. My Dad was a fireman until he was 81 years old, only retiring a few months before he passed away, and my uncle Ron Heathecote was a foundation member of the Silverdale fire brigade and former chief. My son Daniel and his wife Sarah are both volunteer fire officers, and my other son Nathan is married to the daughter of a paid fire fighter. When the Silverdale brigade set-up, in the 1950s there wasn’t a station so the first engine was kept at my grandparents’ house at night and on weekends. Their dairy farm was where the Silverdale Rugby Club is now – the old homestead is still there. My grandparents used to take in boarders and it was part of the deal that they joined the bridge so, essentially, the brigade turned out from my grandparents home in those early days. I can’t speak for the others in my family, but for me, the fire service is an opportunity to do something for the community and that’s what keeps me motivated. It’s about people and the protection and help that a well-trained fire officer can provide. In return, you get to be part of a family where there is comradeship and loyalty, and where you back up the other man 110 per cent. And it extends beyond NZ. Over the years I’ve formed a friendship with the Los Angeles County Fire Department and we’ve hosted a number of youth exchanges. As an example of the sort of brotherhood that exists, when the Silverdale Fire Police Van was broken in to and we lost thousands of dollars in equipment, I sent an email to the retired firefighters of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. In no time at all, we received a cheque for US$2500.
A fire officer gets to see a lot of things that most people would never know about. I consider it a privilege if I can help people, even if it is just holding their hand during a trauma. Sometimes that’s enough. But sometimes you can actually look back and think, “I saved that person’s life.” I’ve never gotten used to the reality that not everyone survives. We (fire officers) might look hard on the outside, but speaking for myself, we really feel it. You think, “If only they had left five minutes earlier or later, they would not have been here.” You do wonder why things happen the way they do sometimes. There have been one or two things over the years that have triggered the odd nightmare. Anyone with grandchildren knows how precious they are and how you would hate anything to ever happen to one of them.
The job’s not without its dangers, although ambulance officers are probably more at risk of assault than we are. While I was working with the ambulance, I was beaten up, threatened with a sawn off shotgun and stabbed. Drugs are usually involved when things get violent. You have to be careful. I remember going in to a house to attend an overdose and a guy pulled a gun out and said. “I’m going to give you a couple of moments to gather your thoughts and then get the hell out of my house.” We backed off pretty quickly!
One of the biggest fires I attended was the two-storey Whangaparaoa Hotel, which had already been marked for demolition. The place was well alight by the time the first unit arrived and there was concern that the fire would spread to the neighbouring Pacific Plaza. Coincidentally, a month prior, we’d done an exercise on the site so were familiar with the building and knew just what we had to do. One of the most memorable fires was when a Great Barrier Island aircraft over-ran the runway at the Dairy Flat airfield. It went across Postmans Road and ended up in a farmer’s paddock, and a strainer post missed the pilot by millimetres. We had to deal with leaking aviation fuel and a trapped pilot.
I grew up in Tavern Road and one of my mates was Don McErlich (Jnr), whose Dad was a fireman. We used to get his Dad’s helmets out and play at being firemen. One day we got one of the old hoses, put it into the home water tank and had a great time squirting water all over the place, pretending to put out fires. Don Snr was not a happy chappie when he came home and found we’d drained his tank! I joined the fire service in Silverdale when I was 15 and spent a year as a messenger before becoming a fireman. I was officer-in-charge at Manly for a few years and then transferred to the Silverdale Fire Police Unit. In 1996, I joined the regional fire support office for the Auckland Fire Region, a job that required providing logistical support for both paid and voluntary personnel. Then, in 2012, four of us from the six-member team were made redundant virtually overnight. Between us, we had 200 years of service. Today I drive buses and supervise the morning shift Monday to Friday for NZ Bus, starting the day at 3.45am and finishing at 2pm.
Fire fighters get a lot of recognition for what they do, but I think there are a lot of volunteers in our communities who never get the acknowledgement that they deserve. They are the real unsung heroes. When you think of St John, surf life saving, Red Cross, Hospice and a whole lot of other organisations, they rely sometimes almost entirely on volunteers. It’s just the Kiwi way. And it’s not just those you see in the emergency who are involved – when there’s a volunteer in the family, it takes a toll on the whole family. They have to get used to their Christmas dinners and family celebrations being interrupted by the pager too. We honour our sporting heroes, but those people who turnout in the rain, in the early hours of the morning, to help others, they are the heroes in my mind. Volunteering is its own reward, because at the end of the day, you get to say to yourself, “Hey, in some small way, I helped someone when they need it most.”
In the early days, the ambulance and fire services operated quite separately. When I became an honorary assistant with St John, I was actually reprimanded by the fire service. You were expected to be one or other, not both. One day the Silverdale fire service responded to a triple fatality at Orewa, where the ambulance officer was working on his own. When I went to help him, I was ordered not to. I’m not the sort to not follow orders, but I did on that occasion. After that, when they saw what I had done, there was a real change in attitude. I think it was the realisation that we were all there to do the same the job and the barriers started to come down.
The role of a fire fighter is always changing, but perhaps the biggest difference now compared to when I started is the equipment we used. Whereas we worked with porter power, hacksaw, K9 partner saw and an axe, today we have everything form the Jaws of Life to power-packed rescue equipment. I’ve had a good life so far and the only thing I wish I’d done differently is that I wish I’d met my wife earlier.
