Firefighters have been getting slower at getting to fires, so, blaming urban sprawl and traffic jams, Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) moved the goalposts and gave them more time to respond.
Where once the target was to get paid crews to 90 per cent of structure fires within eight minutes of a 111 call, that has been cut to 80 per cent. The agency’s latest service delivery review says targets have changed due to factors outside Fenz’s control.
“There is little that can be done quickly to change the response time, besides very expensive and long-term fixes, such as building more stations, buying more appliances, or resourcing more crews,” the review said.
Fenz’s spending was already 40 per cent higher than a Cabinet paper in 2017 forecast it would be. It will top $700 million soon - it was around $400m in 2017, and levies from people’s insurance premiums are set to rise.
Though crews face fewer building fires, flood and medical emergency callouts are growing - and documents showed there is no easy way back without spending millions on more fire stations.
“Response times have been increasing over the last decade,” the October 2022 service delivery review by consultants MartinJenkins said.
Fire response times by area 2021-22. Photo / Fenz
Last year the eight-minute response target was reached 79 per cent of the time. “Currently, when response times are not met, the target is changed,” the review said.
It was cut first to 85 per cent around 2017, then to 80 in 2020-21. Fenz blamed urban sprawl and traffic jams.
MartinJenkins said in addition there were extra health and safety rules, and extra PPE for crews - “reasons... out of Fenz control”.
Even getting rid of fire poles for health and safety reasons had slowed crews down.
“Fires are getting faster, and the response slower,” one firefighter told RNZ.
Every minute counts?
The service reviews advocate a shift from “speed of response” to “effectiveness of response” to measuring “‘how did things turn out?” But speed has been a proxy for quality for years.
“There is a strong correlation between how quickly the fire service arrives and incident outcomes for fire and medical emergencies,” a performance statement in 2017 said.
Fenz’ current public advertising emphasises every minute counts. “Desk research shows that international fire services use similar response measures,” the October review said.
So while criticising the targets as a blunt instrument, it recommended keeping them for now. One gain showed up in the reports: cellphones mean fires may be being called in more quickly.
Fenz has been promising - since it was set up six years ago - to improve its emergency readiness and response. It was taking in far higher levies - up about 50 per cent since 2017, to about $650m a year.
Career firefighters have long protested it spends too much on headquarters, back office and rural firefighting. Annual reports show it consistently spends much more on IT projects than on fire trucks, though just lately it has upped fleet spending.
An executive leadership paper shows the entire operation failed to hit 44 per cent of its targets in 2019-20. Though the number of building fires had been dropping, increased population density “emphasises the need for a rapid response”, a 2017-2021 statement of intent said.
Various annual reports also show a softening of targets around rural fires and hazardous fires.
In rural areas, Fenz cut its target to get volunteer crews to fires within 11 minutes to 85 per cent, down from 90 per cent. Towns were less self-contained, so volunteers often worked out of town or further from the fire station, the reviews said.
Its 2014 target for a hazardous material crew to get to a fire in a city within 20 minutes, 90 per cent of the time, has softened to getting to any such fire within an hour, 85 per cent of the time.
The bugbear in the need for speed was stations. “The primary driver of performance is the physical location of fire stations,” the 2018 annual report said.
An internal email referred to maps of missed target times saying “most demonstrate the impact of distance from station”.
In an Official Information Act (OIA) response to the firefighters’ union, Fenz said it was using geospatial analysis “deep dives” last year to analyse urban sprawl’s impacts. This let it tap local knowledge about the number and placement of fire stations, or landbank for them.
It aimed to open two new stations a year.
Cutting the number of fires - “risk reduction” - by using education programmes in homes and schools was a key way of coping, its OIA response made clear. The review last October shelved 47 out of Fenz’s 115 service delivery goals, but was itself put on pause during industrial strife at Fenz last year.
Fenz said there were lots of factors that affected response times such as traffic, the distance and if the usual first-response crew was tied up elsewhere.
“All districts plan for and implement a variety of strategies when responding to incidents, depending on factors such as the type of incident, and what other emergencies are occurring at the same time,” Russell Wood, deputy chief executive service delivery operations, said in a statement.
It advised the public about fire-safe behaviour, and for commercial buildings provided guidelines and approval of systems, he said.
