Te Puke firefighters win national drivers’ challenge

Mark Deacon, John Wyllie, Jodi Purdie, Grant Scothern and Karl Simmons from Te Puke Volunteer Fire Brigade won the team trophy at the United Fire Brigades' Association of NZ National Drivers’ Challenge.

Te Puke Volunteer Fire Brigade has shown it has some of the best fire truck drivers in the country.

A five-strong team competed in the United Fire Brigades’ Association of NZ National Drivers Challenge at Manfeild at the weekend, bringing home the team trophy with Grant Scothern finishing in third place overall.

The annual event brings together 100 firefighters from Fire and Emergency NZ (Fenz), the Defence Forces, airports and other industries to test their skills driving a range of fire trucks through various tasks.

The exercises are designed to align with the fire and emergency skills manual and include bay and parallel parking, straight-line driving, lane changes, braking, estimating clearance and negotiating serpentine and shrinking chicanes.

Te Puke chief fire officer Dale Lindsay says it was a fantastic result.

“The reality is these driver challenges are exactly that - they are a challenge at a level far higher that you are likely to encounter most of the time on the road as an emergency response driver. They’ve got all these different events that they have to do and it’s not an easy competition to win, which is how competitions should be.”

Grant Scothern was third overall at the United Fire Brigades' Association of NZ National Drivers’ Challenge.

He says Grant is a regular at the competition and “has always been at, or near, the top”.

But it isn’t all about competing.

“It’s great for them to go down and compete with other brigades from around the country and get to and meet people from other brigades from around the country. There’s that camaraderie you have as a firefighter among other brigades and being able to talk and see how we stack up.”

The contest begins with a theory test followed by 11 individual exercises, in which drivers are judged on overall ability, efficiency, aptitude and smoothness of operation of fire appliances.