My Account
The chief fire officer and one of the founders of the Puhoi Volunteer Fire Brigade has been barred from operational duties after refusing to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
Russell Green will continue as chief fire officer at Puhoi, but his responsibilities will be strictly in a non-operational support role.
Mr Green, who has served as a firefighter at Puhoi for 14 years, will no longer be allowed on a fire truck to attend call outs or be able to train with his crew.
The dramatic curtailment of his role came after Mr Green failed to comply with a government Covid-19 Public Health Response Order, which required more than 13,300 Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) personnel to have their first vaccination by November 29 and their second vaccination by January 14.
“Clearly it is my choice. I suffer the consequences of my choice, and I understand that,” he says.
“It’s probably not the way I wanted to go out. In fact, I’m not out yet – I’ve just
been sidelined.”
Mr Green says his chief reason for refusing the vaccine was his belief that the Government was “holding a gun” to his head and that the vaccination demand was “just the tip of the iceberg”, with more demands inevitably to follow.
“In my mind, the Government is holding people in a state of fear – making people scared – and controlling the population as it sees fit,” he says.
Mr Green says one additional Puhoi firefighter has been stood down over the vaccine issue but, despite this, the brigade is still in “good health”.
But he thinks the future is more uncertain. He suspects the Government will keep shifting the goalposts and as time goes on there will be more and more demands placed on firefighters, such as a requirement to have repeated booster shots, which will generate ever more reluctance to comply.
“If they keep following this line, they will whittle the brigades down to the last man standing,” he says.
Mr Green helped establish the first Puhoi fire station in 2007, which originally comprised just a few shipping containers and some gates put together by volunteers over Waitangi weekend. He later drove a fundraising campaign and took on a project management role to establish the current modern Puhoi fire station, which opened in 2017.
Mr Green’s deputy Jared Rehm will take charge of operational duties at the Puhoi Brigade.
FENZ refused to discuss the number of firefighters who had been stood down in the Mahurangi area, but did issue a statement saying that nationally, 89 per cent of volunteers covered by the health response order had been fully or partially vaccinated. All brigades remained operational except for two smaller brigades – one on the South Island’s west coast and one in the Bay of Plenty. These were currently not functional because of insufficient vaccinated volunteers.
