Senior firefighter Rebecca Wright outside the temporary living quarters at Napier Fire Station. Photo / Paul Taylor
Senior firefighter Rebecca Wright outside the temporary living quarters at Napier Fire Station. Photo / Paul Taylor
More than a year of shipping-container sleepovers waiting to fight fires or rescue people from crashed cars will come to an end mid-winter with the completion of a $4 million Napier Fire Station makeover.
The work was sparked by a 2019 seismic risk assessment report that revealed the Taradale Rdstation, opened in 1968 to replace the former station now still standing in Tennyson St near the Napier CBD, was a significant safety risk – the worst of the "career" stations throughout New Zealand.
It had a seismic risk rating of just 15 per cent of the building standards, less than a fifth of the minimum required for an emergency services building.
Fire and Emergency NZ district manager Ken Cooper confirmed demolition and a rebuild was considered, along with discussing whether there was a future for an emergency services hub in Napier.
With considerable space needed for the fleet of fire trucks and other equipment, other site issues and the complex still meeting parameters for being retained, FENZ decided on a strengthening project and fit-for-purpose modernising of the station, including the overnight accommodation for duty firefighters.
"We then had to decide on whether to maintain staff on-site during the work," he said.
"We have eight firefighters rostered on-station at all times, so we brought in repurposed shipping containers for temporary use as bedrooms."
The staff have "embraced it" despite the duration stretching well past "normal" expectations.
The old Napier fire station, now a restaurant and apartments. Photo / Ian Cooper
As with many construction projects, the pandemic, which propelled the project as a "shovel-ready" item supported by Government's Provincial Growth Fund, has, ironically, led to delays in getting construction materials.
Palmerston North company McMillan and Lockwood Central was awarded the lead contract in 2020, started work in June last year and was expecting to finish in July or August, Cooper said.
There is no extension of the six-bay fire appliance garage but there is a new roof, health and safety improvement of facilities for staff returning from emergencies, and improved space for female officers, an issue since Anne Barry became New Zealand and the Commonwealth's first full-time female firefighter in 1981.
It is part of a $57.8 million spend upgrading 26 stations nationwide, announced by the Government in mid-2020.
The work has included the recently-completed work at the Waipawa station, and work on a similar scale to that in Napier will start by the end of August at the Hastings station, which opened in 1975.
Some motivation for the work also came from the Professional Firefighters Union, which in 2020 used the Official Information Act to get the 2019 report, as well as a 2013 report and a 2014 geotechnical review.
Union national secretary Wattie Watson said at the time: "That (2019) report is damning but other key factors including whether the fire station could be used to respond to the community in the hours after an earthquake, or whether the building is likely to be significantly compromised by the risk of liquefaction, is yet to be investigated."
FENZ had confirmed that the station had the lowest seismic rating of all "career" fire stations in New Zealand.
It is the biggest job on the suite since the station opened, moving from the Tennyson St station which was then bought by the now-late architect Guy Natusch.
For several years it was Natusch's offices, and home of the Napier Art Deco Trust, and now sites a ground floor restaurant and apartments upstairs.
In keeping with its plans for wider community use, the Taradale Rd station was used as a Civil Defence co-ordination centre in the Napier floods of November 2020.
