FIREMEN FROM PARNELL

Ella S Ranfft Shivani D PatelWayne CY Shih

FIREMEN FROM PARNELLElla S Ranfft

Shivani D PatelWayne CY Shih

Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design24 Balfour Road, Parnell, Auckland 1052, New Zealand

First published 2015

A catalogue for this book is avaliable from the National Library of New Zealand

Paperback ISBN 978-0-473-32824-5PDF ISBN 978-0-473-32825-2EPub ISBN 978-0-473-32877-1

Copyright 2015 Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 NZ. Some Rights Reserved.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 New Zealand License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/nz/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

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All images are taken by Ella Ranfft & Wayne ShihDesigned by Wayne Shih

Proudly printed in Auckland, New Zealand

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special thanks to

New Zealand Fire Service - Parnell Fire StationMarcel Sanders (Parnell Station Manager)

Phil BoughtwoodAtlas ChristieJohn Leonard

Neal Prebble (Ellerslie Fire Station) &

Whitecliffe College of Arts & DesignLynnemaree Patterson

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John Leonard

I’m one of the station officers here, which is basically shift management. There’s two of us on this watch, and there’s 4 watchers, so altogether there’s 8 station officers here. We have one station officer per appli-ance, so there’s one here, and one on the other side as well. We’re both the same rank. There is a management protocol, so basically the guy on the pump, which is me, is the station of-ficer.

How long have you been at Parnell?

I’ve been coming here for nearly 3 years as a relieving station manager, but I used to be station officer here for 10 years. Then I transferred to an-other station, I was a fireman when I was here as well. But as a manager, I’ve been here about 13 years.

Have you ever been on a cat rescue mission?

Yes, many. Once, there was a dead tree, all of the branches had fallen off it. Somehow this cat had got up there, so we had to weigh whether it was safe enough to put a ladder up against or if we were going to push the dead tree over. So we just put a ladder up against it. I went up, and with animals, especially with claws and stuff like that, you normally wear your bunker coat and gloves so you don’t get scratched. This cat when I got up there, actually ran over the top of me, and down the ladder. The one thing I say to most people that call up is have you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree? They know how to come down; they’re probably just a bit apprehensive about the height.

We don’t rescue cats for cats; we rescue cats for cat owners.

What do you like and dislike about being a firemen?

Everyday is the same, so you miss out on social events. Everyone else works shift patterns, Monday to Friday, so they get weekends off. Whereas we work some weekends, some not. I really enjoy that you have a crew. We spend a lot of time together, this becomes like our second home. You basically live together, cook togeth-er, and that can be a plus or a minus, you know, depends how you get on. It’s a second family in a way. It’s a good feeling.

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Phil Boughtwood

I’m a qualified fire fighter, our role is to carry out fire fighting duties, and other such duties, we basically oper-ate in the back of a truck, or we drive, and we take orders from our boss, and at certain instances, we get told what to do, and how to do it.

What’s the daily routine at the station?

On a weekday for instance. We’ll come to work, we jump the crew at 7am, so they shoot off home, we have a sit down breakfast, and have a bit of a chat. Then normally at 8am, is when work starts. We’ll check over the truck, check all the gears, some-times we drive the truck out, check if the pump works, run water through

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it, etc. Then we’re allocated 1 hour of physical training time. We go down to the local gym, get 1 hour gym time down there, get back to the station around 10am, and then have morn-ing tea. Then whatever the day holds. Bit of training or a bit of communi-ty education, testing equipment, or whatever comes up. Might have calls throughout.

Can I ask what the cute little truck next to the big ones for?

That’s our marine rescue boat, that has gears on board to do stuff like boat fires; and also go out to all the islands, and out in the harbor. If there’s a fire in the dock areas, we can take our truck out to the police boats at the wharf and go out from there to support.

What made you want to be a fire fighter?

The job itself is quite an interesting job, lots of variety. I like how you get a lot of respect from the public for it. It’s also quite nice to do a job where you help. Sometimes you can’t do much, but other times you can at least try to help out, and it’s reward-ing in that aspect.

What did you want to be when you were a child?

A bunch of things. Fire fighter did come up early on in sort of my col-lege years, but I guess before then, normal stuff. I wanted to be a builder at one stage, and a scientist at anoth-er stage, but then I realised I wasn’t smart enough. I thought I’d be a fire-man instead. I tried out for the fire service straight out of school, but due to my age, I was turned down so I got some life skills and came back later.

Atlas Christie

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What happens when a call comes in?

What happens when a call comes in is the pilot lights will illuminate. There will be an announcement that will be made over the speakers, and the doors will automatically open. As soon as that happens, we get up from whatever we’re doing, and we’ll start walking towards the truck. We’ll hear where we’re going to, so for ex-ample, they’ll say “Parnell 251, house fire, 32 Gladstone Road.” So we get prepared, and walk to the truck. We have all our gear laid out, ready to put on, as quickly as we can. We get into the truck, we sort of know where we’re going to; preparing ourselves, thinking about what we’re going to do.

Have you ever saved a celebrity?

Goldie, a neighbourhood celebrity cat. Rescued him from the top of a 2 storey building. He was up there for 2 days. In terms of a human, no. *laughs* Just so you know, I rescued 6 cats in different incidents, that was my record for one year.

Can you summarise your life story?

I had a late career change. Had a slight interest in fire service, years and years ago. But it was around 28 years of age, and at that stage, they had a cut off point of 27. Which was a bit ageist back in the day. Later on in life, I was running a printing com-pany and I saw an advertisement on the Internet. At that stage I was 36, and they had removed that criteria. I was thinking, right I still feel fit and healthy, and it was always something

at the back of my mind. I applied, and got in. That’s pretty much the story in terms of the fire service. Very short life summary: First 10 years, I spent in Wellington, then moved to Auck-land. I have $60,000 worth of student loan, I studied Japanese, worked in radio, became a qualified personal trainer, lived in Dubai, and Japan. Travelled around the world, worked for Emirates Airlines. I’ve got a boy who’s 8. I drive a Daihatsu classic, 4 cylinder, Daihatsu Charade.

I can ride a unicycle, I can eat a cheese burger in one bite.

*laughs*

How long have you been in the fire service?

I’m coming up to 7 years, as of Sep-tember. One thing good about being in the fire service for 7 years is that they give you an extra 3 days off a year.

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Neal PrebbleI’m what they call a senior fire fight-er. I’m one of the guys at the back, or driving, we all swap around. So we basically do what the station opera-tor wants us to do for the shift; be-cause there’s particular things he has booked in advanced, or he manages us in our studies, if we want to prog-ress.

What’s the most interesting call that has come in?

The first one that stuck in my head, was my first fatality. Because that was quite a shock to me. But I was quite happy in a way, because of the scenario. There was a guy who had over taken a truck, and then he had been hit by a truck going the oppo-site direction, then hit by the truck he had over taken. So as you can imagine, there was no roof, his feet were still under the pedals, and his head was by the back door — on the passengers side — he was all in one piece. He was just elongated. He was jellified. He was a gang member, so I had no sympathy for him. The car was stolen, which he had also used for a burglary the night before. So that stuck in my mind because it was my first fatality.

And for humour, I remember one time, I had a crew that I was together with for over 10 years. We were pret-ty good at putting fires out, we had a lot of practices. I had a house fire, and it was down a little slope, a little state house. It was going really well, I took a high pressure hose down, ran down the slope, and made my entry.

My number 2 was busy, and my pump operator was working the pump, so everyone was busy. When my pump operator told the story later on, he said he saw me make entry, and then he saw nothing happen. The fire just carried on. He thought what the hell was I doing? *Laughs* And what I was doing, was I was wedged inside a bicycle. Somebody put a bicycle in the front door, so I was stuck in the bicycle frame. I managed to put the fire out, but everyone was sort of cracking up at it, it was really funny.

What is some advice you would tell someone who wants

to be a fire fighter?

There’s certain basic requirements you need, you can’t be afraid of heights, you can’t be claustropho-bic, you can’t be the type of person who hesitates. My wife for example, if something shocking happens, she goes “AHHH” for about 30 seconds, before she’ll actually consciously start to think, sure training helps but there’s just certain personalities that just don’t meld well to being a fire fighter. You’ve got to be a team play-er, and individuals certainly stand out.

You’ve got to think about your buddy, because fires’ are a

dangerous situation; you’re constantly

thinking about safety.