Light The Way appeal needs $4m to fund urgent station builds.
Being an ambulance officer on the front line is tough work, so being able to reset and reconnect at a well-equipped ambulance station is vital — yet many Hato Hone St John bases around the country are in desperate need of repairs and upgrades.
Ambulance officer Stephen ‘Spot’ Potter is based at the Pukekohe station, which later this year will move into a new base for vehicles and crew, knows first-hand why having an improved station is so important.
Potter — whose nickname is a convenient shortening of his initial and surname — has been involved with St John for 30 years, first as a volunteer and then over 25 years as a full-time ambulance officer. He’s seen the demand for ambulance services grow along with the formerly rural area — Pukekohe’s population is now over 27,000, an increase of around 10,000 residents since 2006.
Nationwide, demand for the charity’s emergency services has steadily increased over the past 10 years due to an increasing and aging population, with additional pressures in the form of Covid-19 and several extreme weather events. In most of the 14 areas included in the Annual Appeal fundraising, call-out numbers have more than doubled over the past decade.
But while St John receives funding to cover emergency response staff and up to 82 per cent of operational costs, it gets no capital funding towards infrastructure — including ambulances, lifesaving equipment and the vitally important stations that house them.
This year’s Light the Way Appeal aims to raise $4 million to help fund 14 urgent repair and new-build projects for ambulance stations from Whangārei to Invercargill, including Mt Roskill and Howick in Auckland city, and on Waiheke Island, as well as critical builds in Akaroa and Christchurch as well as a Southland Hub in Invercargill.
Potter says having a fit-for-purpose, well-equipped and comfortable base while on duty is vital for ambulance and support staff, as it becomes a “home away from home” during long and sometimes gruelling shifts: “We’ll often leave the station pretty early in our shift and can be out for hours at a time. When we come back, we need to re-stock our ambulance and check all the gear, so we’re ready to respond to the next job in. We also re-stock ourselves, and try to have some food.
“If we do get a bit of down time, especially if we’ve had a hard job, we can meet with our team leader and have a bit of a chat and a debrief and talk it over with our colleagues to try to process what we’ve seen or done.”
Stations are also used for training and upskilling sessions for staff, including running ‘tabletop’ exercises which run through responses to different emergency scenarios. Many are also a vital community hub, supporting volunteer first responders, running youth cadet groups and hosting local Waka Ora health-shuttle drivers, who take elderly residents or those without private transport to medical appointments.
During disaster situations, such as Cyclone Gabrielle last year, local ambulance stations become a hub for services – a beacon of light for smaller communities.
Like many St John staff members, Potter was drawn to the charitable organisation through being on the receiving end of its services. “As a child I had severe asthma and I arrested — stopped breathing — several times. The local ambulance staff saved my life on a few occasions, along with the local GP and my mum and dad, who got quite handy at CPR. I was really grateful for that and was interested in the ambulance service because of it.”
After training as a mechanic, he started volunteering for the service before going full-time five years later.
“I went out with them to do an ‘observer’ shift and that was it — I was hooked from the moment I got in the ambulance,” he says. “I liked the idea of driving fast and getting paid for it, but it was dealing with people and helping them in their hour of need that really attracted me. I’d had some lovely people look after me and wanted to do the same for others.”
Over Potter’s three decades of service with Hato Hone St John, he’s seen some significant changes, not just an increase in workload: “We can now do an awful lot more for patients before their arrival at hospital. Our practices and equipment have come a long way, and our training has also changed significantly. It was all done in-house when I started but now it’s a three-year degree.”
What hasn’t changed is St John’s involvement in local communities. The old station at Pukekohe, now demolished, was built with funds raised by local people and included a community hall used for first-aid training and other functions.
“With our new station, again the community has been very generous in raising money towards the build so far, and it will also have community facilities as well as a much larger operational area,” he says. “When I started working out of the original station 14 years ago, they were already talking about replacing it — that’s how long it can take to raise the money for an ambulance station and get it organised.
“It’s not a cheap or easy thing to do, and we really need and appreciate the support of New Zealanders for our Annual Appeal – especially on Giving Day when all donations will be doubled.”
Make a difference, donate today: lighttheway.stjohn.org.nz