My Account
Minister for Internal Affairs and Pacific Peoples Barbara Edmonds was in Wellsford and Warkworth on March 2 to hear how local volunteers had coped during the recent floods and cyclone.
With Fire & Emergency NZ as part of her portfolio, Edmonds’ first port of call was the Wellsford Volunteer Fire Brigade, where she was given a tour of the station by chief fire officer Trevor Bowmar.
Edmonds joined the Cabinet as part of Chris Hipkins’ January 31 reshuffle, before being made Associate Minister for Cyclone Recovery in the week after the storm struck New Zealand. She said the seriousness of the event was brought home when, instead of receiving ministerial briefings in the Beehive, she was being brought up to speed while travelling to the funerals of the firefighters lost at Muriwai.
In Wellsford, Edmonds heard that the brigade’s old-style pagers had come back into their own after the cyclone, when not only power, but cellphone coverage and wifi had gone down, rendering modern comms methods non-existent.
Bowmar said the brigade, and the neighbouring St John Ambulance, were “pretty isolated” and had to be self-reliant, as they didn’t always have the kit they needed. He said they didn’t even have a generator or a four-wheel drive vehicle.
“We’re asking a heck of a lot of our members,” he said. “We rely on local people to do quite a bit of stuff for us.
“We should have a generator here, and that could help our friends next door as well.”
The FENZ assistant commander for Waitemata, Katie Pocock, was also present for the Minister’s visit, and said that busy volunteer brigades like Wellsford were under huge pressure, and not just during cyclones.
“These brigades step up time after time and are always the ones being counted,” she said. “The storms are a strong example, but they do that day-to-day. There’s a lot of pressure on our volunteers.”
Bowmar said the Ministry and FENZ needed to talk to brigades about what they needed in terms of equipment and budget, rather than it being imposed from above.
“Talk to us. We have a good understanding of where we are and what we need,” he said. “We know best what we need, not people sitting in Wellington telling us what we need.”
Edmonds acknowledged Bowmar’s concerns and said they would be part of the department’s discussion towards brigades being able to work more efficiently. She also said civil defence generally had not been updated for a long time and it was definitely something to rethink.
The Minister then went on to the Wellsford Community Centre where she met volunteers who had given shelter to hundreds of people stranded during both recent storm events, and then to the volunteer fire brigade at Warkworth.
