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NEW ZEALAND FIRE SERVICE

The New Zealand Fire Service (Whakaratonga Iwi in Maori) is the national body in New Zealand responsible for Fire Fighting and Emergency Service Response.

Overview

Name: New Zealand Fire Service
Maori: Whakaratonga Iwi
Motto: "Service to the People"

Mission: To reduce the incidence and consequence of fire and to provide a professional response to other emergencies.

Vision: Working with communities to protect what they value.

Values: Serving our communities, Integrity, Adaptability, Skill, Comradeship.

The New Zealand Fire Service's key aims, as required by statute, are fire safety and fire prevention.

The NZFS' Fire Service Commission developed a statement of strategic direction in June 1999 which comprised 4 elements:

  • Focus on fire prevention, fire safety and fire outcomes (This placed a greatly increased emphasis on fire prevention and fire safety while also working to improve the outcomes from traditional emergency response activities).
  • Resource reallocation and 'value for money' expenditure (This aimed to appropriately resource the increased fire prevention and fire safety work. It also required all resourcing decisions to pass a risk-based 'best value for money' test).
  • Best practise organisation (This aimed to achieve a culture of continuous improvement and reform in the Fire Service through constant exposure to best practise in general organisation).
  • Strong Fire Service governance and management (This is to enable the Fire Service to: Deliver on its statutory mandate, Respond to the needs of all stakeholders, Become resilient to shocks through good risk management, Support the Government's emergency management reforms).

Structure

The NZFS is somewhat unique, internationally, in that it has jurisdiction over the entire country with no division by region or city. The entire organisation reports to the Minister of Internal Affairs, by way of the New Zealand Fire Service Commission. The Commission is composed of five members, and the Minister is required by law to appoint at least one person who is either a fire engineer or has experience as a senior operational fire fighter.

Beneath the Commission are the positions of Chief Executive and National Commander. Currently both positions are filled by Mike Hall, who was formerly the chief of the New South Wales Fire and Rescue Service. Where the Chief Executive does not have operational fire fighting experience, a separate National Commander is appointed to be the most senior operational fire fighter in the country. The National Commander may take control at a particularly serious incident, though this happens very rarely.

The country is broken into eight fire regions, each in the charge of a Fire Region Commander. All FRC's report directly to the National Commander, and are promoted from the ranks of operational staff. An FRC may take control of a major incident, and is ultimately responsible for any incident at which they are present even if they are not the Officer-in-Charge. The Chief Executive similarly has a number of direct reports, though these are concerned with matters such as human resources and finance rather than operational matters.

See also