Old frigate valuable as rescue training resource

The old decommissioned navy warship Wellington still has its uses.

Specialist urban rescue teams swarmed over the old Leander-class frigate in Wellington for two days last week to practise the skills they might need if a major disaster struck the country.

The New Zealand Fire Service runs the Urban Search and Rescue Teams based in Auckland, Palmerston North and Christchurch. The teams draw on several agencies for specialist skills in the case of a disaster including technicians, engineers, medics and firefighters.

The teams could be deployed to use heavy search and rescue and cutting skills to find and free hurt or trapped people from buildings, bridge disasters, ship incidents, a train derailment or anything involving a major structural disaster.

The Wellington is tied up near Te Papa on the Wellington waterfront as it is prepared to be sunk as an artificial dive reef in Island Bay on the Wellington coast next month.

Fire Service national special operations manager Jim Stuart-Black told NZPA today it was too good a chance to miss out and the teams got valuable experience cutting through steel and practising their skills including cutting, lifting and hoisting heavy steel.

"Getting hold of large volumes of steel is not that easy so it was a good opportunity to go down on to the frigate where there was an opportunity to do some cutting."

The team helped the Sink F69 Trust cut away and remove the top part of the ship's mast.

"So far they have only had one cutting team on board and they didn't know what the vessel could do in terms of whether it could handle three or four teams using the hot cutting gear," he said.

"It was an exceptional couple of days," Mr Stuart-Black said.

The frigate was due to be sunk on November 12.

- NZPA