KEY POINTS:
Around 5pm they drifted into the Auckland City station's bar in Pitt St, off-duty firemen out for a night on the town. They'd come from as far afield as Palmerston North, Tauranga and Wellsford and from suburban homes around Auckland, just as they'd mustered on that first day 25 years ago at the Fire Service Recruitment Training Centre in Mt Wellington.
25 years to the day - April 5 - the Class of '83 reunited. Not to paint the town red, of course: a buffet dinner at Sky City Casino, a few (perhaps quite a few) drinks, a lot of laughs as they reminisced and ribbed each other as firemen do, then going home.
As they looked at their class photo and joked about receding hairlines and expanding waistlines, one of them said it was amazing they'd got through 25 years without anyone being killed or injured.
Thirteen of the rookie class of 18 were due at the reunion, along with two instructors and the former head of the training centre. Amazing, too, that most were still with the Fire Service after all these years - surviving restructuring, going 10 years without a pay rise and the toll of shiftwork on marriages and family life. The danger and the dead bodies, the adrenalin rushes and the lows.
Some had reached the top of the ladder - like Mitchell Brown, at 18 the baby of the course, who is now Western District assistant commander, and Geoff Purcell who manages the modern-day national training centre in Rotorua - a world removed from "Colditz-like" Mt Wellington.
Others command stations but still get to go "on the trucks" - like Derek Lovell, senior station officer in Hamilton who was bringing Neil Sharpe (who has left the service) up to Auckland with him.
The others realised early on that Lovell might be late - pagers were going off, alerting them to a major incident in Hamilton.
They hadn't seen much of him since he left Auckland about eight years ago, on transfer. They were keen to see the clown of the course, the solid-as-a-rock "real bloke" with a great sense of humour.
"We thought 'oh well, he'll be a bit late'," says Chris Delfos, a station officer at Ponsonby. "Then we heard he'd been injured but didn't realise how seriously.
"We didn't ever think we wouldn't see him again."
Only after the reunion broke up did they learn, individually, that Lovell had become the first New Zealand firefighter killed at a fire since 1957.
For the Class of '83, the anniversary reminiscing suddenly became much more poignant. For the past week, their thoughts have inexorably returned to "Derek".
"It's when our own people are injured you get true emotions coming out," says Roy Veal, in 1983 the oldest recruit at 29, these days training manager for the Bay-Waikato district.
"There wouldn't be a firefighter in Bay-Waikato or Auckland who hasn't shed a tear over Derek's death."
Particularly those who went through Mt Wellington with him. "Derek was one of those guys you hoped was on your crew," says Phil Grace, station officer at Ponsonby.
Says Delfos: "I can still hear him saying: 'We're going to get through this'."
THEY came from varied backgrounds: several were tradesmen who enjoyed working with machinery, some were the sons of firemen or knew firemen, most were community-minded.
Several, including Lovell, had military training - it helped to lessen the "hell" of the course. For 10 weeks the recruits endured enormous physical and mental pressure, intended to help them learn their limits, discover "inner strengths" and build trust in each other. What the rookie course did most was forge unbreakable bonds, though they scattered far and wide.
Richard Knight, now a senior firefighter at Avondale, and Jan Bottema (Birkenhead) became close friends with Lovell and indulged a passion for hunting and fishing.
"One of the things that shines through with the guys off my course is that while personal situations change, when we get back together it's almost like the day after the rookies' course," says Knight.
Brett Kilburn left the service 14 years ago and has a car dealership, but says most of his close friends are firefighters. He bears no ill will towards instructors who "could make grown men cry - I was one of them.
"I think it worked quite well. People come in as individuals - you may get a quiet one or a smartarse - they break everyone down to a common denominator and build them up again."
Each day began with a run up the mountain - and the pace never relented. They'll never forget the fear of scaling the seven-storey tower using short "hook" ladders which were relayed up, level by level, and hooked to the next window up, the drill repeated until reaching the top, then running heavy hoses up. Nor will they forget the heat of the smoke chamber.
With tougher health and safety laws the hook ladder drills are long gone but the veterans are not convinced it's for the best.
"It made you appreciate you can't do it on your own," says Grace. "You have to rely on your mate."
With exams to pass every week, they were under constant pressure to perform. The point was to make the disciplines ingrained.
"If you didn't do it right you wouldn't be there the next day," says Veal. "You really had to perform. You needed to really knit together as a team. We became quite tight - that's why the reunion was so important to us and why it has made Derek's death so tough."
Geoff Purcell says the course taught the crew to look out for each other. "If you get knocked on the head by some concrete roof tiles, you want to know that the guy next to you is going to react instantly regardless of whether he likes you or only met you two minutes ago.
"You get in some sticky situations - you have to have that trust."
Crews follow a roster: two day shifts, two nights, then four days off. It gives the flexibility to pursue other interests such as university studies or get more involved in bringing up children - or to go hunting and fishing, as Lovell loved to do.
"Thirty years ago, the perception of firefighters was playing pool and fighting fires," says Lyell. "It has changed dramatically - the job is nothing like when we joined."
In those days, firemen were taught to fight fires. With fire prevention advances, there are fewer building fires but the firefighter's role has greatly expanded. There are more traffic accidents and hazardous material callouts, including P labs. There's fire safety and smoke alarm promotion in schools and organisations. The Fire Service is the "first emergency response" for weather events, earthquakes and urban search and rescue.
"We used to go after tradesmen who could do their craft activities around the station," says Brown, a past national recruitment manager. "We needed plumbers and carpenters." These days people may be recruited for their computer literacy or communication skills.
"We've become a more diverse emergency management organisation, a lot more relevant to the country in terms of the broad role we have. I don't think the kind of people applying have changed in terms of their motivations, but the pool of people we go after now is a lot broader.
"Generally people join for the same reasons we did - serving the community and doing so in a spirit of kinship."
Talking to Grace, Delfos and reunion organiser Doug Lyell around a table at the City station, what's obvious is the camaraderie. They take the piss out of each other, as blokes do, but there's an underlying respect.
"I don't think I fully understood it until Derek's death," says Lyell. "I didn't go and drink beer at Derek's place every Friday but I knew I could trust him with my life. We all expose that part of ourselves to each other.
"It's an unusual relationship - it usually takes years to get to know a person's character - we had to get there very quickly."
The camaraderie is one of the job's pluses. "Working with good mates - that to me is the best part of the job," says Grace.
In the 1990s, the firefighter's job description came under intense pressure as the National Government took a knife to the public service. Under commissioner Roger Estall, there were plans to reduce crews on trucks and lay off staff, volunteers were pitched against professionals and professionals told to reapply for their jobs. This followed a long-running pay dispute.
"We went 10 years without a pay rise," says Lyell. "We'll always be behind the 8-ball. The entry pay now is so poor that a number of firemen are on income support."
Even after 25 years, the basic pay of those still in the frontline is $55,000 to $60,000. What keeps them going is job satisfaction.
"We arrive at incidents where there's a lot of distress and panic and we can get in and make the situation better," says Lyell. "What we do really counts - there's a great deal of satisfaction in that.
"People just want to know they can press three buttons and someone will be there. They don't care if we sleep at the station."
Former instructor Lance Blyde, now a senior station officer, says people are always happy to see firefighters arrive.
"What makes it rewarding is the sort of thing most employers spend megabucks on - the variety of work, the fact you can't predict what you'll be doing one day to the next and the satisfaction that comes with being able to do something to help other people."
That can mean rescuing a cat or extracting the dead and injured from road accidents, attending earthquakes or floods. All have an element of risk -at house fires there's the possibility of an LPG cylinder exploding.
"Whatever we do we judge the risk-to-benefit," says Purcell. If there's no person to be saved [at a property fire] you're not going to put yourself at risk. A few years ago you would go in regardless. [The Tamahere incident] sounds like one of those things that caught everyone off-guard. There was no known risk."
Mostly a major call-out brings an adrenalin rush and boosts morale. "You get on a natural high," says Purcell. "There are some pretty gruesome times as well - people spread all over the road, particularly children.
"It does affect you - a lot of black humour goes around. But there are some pretty good support teams in place now - we look after each other."
Which brings the Class of '83 back to Derek, his family and his badly injured crew.
"It's been bloody hard at work this week," says Richard Knight. "But as much as I'm suffering, our thoughts are really with his wife and family and the other guys that are really badly hurt. It's going to affect them for the rest of their lives.
"I'm hoping like hell [the injured] all come through - it's going to be a bloody hard battle."
'GUNG-HO' DAYS OVER
Safety would have been paramount in the minds of Red Watch firefighters answering the Tamahere callout, say former colleagues of Derek Lovell.
Avoiding unnecessary risk is drummed into firefighters in training since the "gung-ho" days of the early 1980s, the Class of 83 survivors say.
A turning point was the ICI fire in 1984, when a number of firefighters suffered chemical poisoning. One died from leukemia four years later.
Chris Delphos was one of several 1983 rookies at that fire. "Afterwards, a station officer drove a colleague to hospital because the skin was falling off his balls. Then I noticed the same thing and when the officer got back he took me up there as well.
"We didn't think much about it. Now it would be so PC."
National training centre manager Geoff Purcell says unless someone is trapped inside, firefighters are unlikely to enter a burning building. "If you're not going to save anyone, why risk your life for property?"
Roy Veal, training manager for the Bay-Waikato district, says the "safe person concept" becomes ingrained during training. "The priority is to keep yourself safe, keep your buddy safe and then the public - because if you're not safe you can't help the public."
The safety culture wasn't always as strong. "Thirty years ago if you wore breathing apparatus, you were deemed to be sissy," says Veal. "Nowadays firemen wouldn't think of walking through smoke without one on so they don't get cancer and die at 55 or 60. Back then, it was cool to keep your jacket undone and not wear breathing apparatus.
"These days we don't have a lot of bravado going on. We try to keep safe and we do it better than most other brigades in the world.
"[Whatever happened] it wouldn't have happened because of Derek's non-safety culture."
