Please contact our North Island team on 0800 800 108 to make a booking!

30 Holmglen Street, Washdyke, Timaru

We are now located at 99 Niven Street, Onekawa, Napier 4110 – Phone 06 843 7300

New South Island premises opening very soon!!

The training was provided by Ali McNabb, Nathan Meager, Ian Reid and Jason Steer from Fire and Safety Training Ltd. Training was very full-on and many recruits commented that it was a life-changing experience!



Pictured top left is Shannon Maaka (Waitoa) being presented the Top Recruit Shield by Lead Instructor Ali McNabb.

In the top right photo Sierra-Lee Wharepapa (Te Rapa Site) Carol Lee (Crawford Street) are pictured as no. 1 & 2 positions on the branch delivery (fire hose).

The photo on the bottom left shows a height rescue exercise featuring Jason Steer (Walt) being lowered by Louis Booth (Te Rapa), Gavin Stowe (Crawford St) and Nathan Meager (Instructor).

Pictured bottom left is a group photo of the Fonterra ERT Recruits May 2011 and features the following:

Back from left: John Herbert, Anaru Irwin, Louis Booth, Gavin Stow, Peter Hemming, Nathan Craven, Bryce Kendrick, Carol Lee

Middle from left: Shannon Maaka, Glenn Norman, Sierra-Lee Wharepapa

Front from left: Catherine Dubé, John Trueman, Willie Warren, Hannah Brown, Don McLaughlan, Richard Turk

Thanks to Geoff McKay of Visual Media Productions Ltd for supplying the photos and content.

The following excerpt was featured in the NZITO May 2011 Newsletter.

COOLER PASTURES: Timaru firemen Gordon Ireland, left, and Bob Stevens are moving on from the Fire Service after a combined 84 years' service.

More than 40 years of smoke, ash and water coated the career of Bob Stevens and Gordon Ireland. Now life will be a little quieter.

From the days of cork helmets, no gloves and woollen coats, the pair have seen an evolution in the tools they use and the environment they work in.

Though Mr Stevens finished his career without much ado, Mr Ireland’s last full shift on Green Watch saw an unusual 13 callouts.

Vegetation fires, transformer fires, a car crashing onto a transformer and fires at Timaru Girls’ High School – “I just about had the whole range of things in two or three days, so people want to see me gone”.

In January Gordon Ireland will officially clock out, just a day or two after the 41st anniversary of his arrival, on January 20, 1970.

“I’ve had only one job really. The job’s been good to me and taught me a lot of skills.”

But it is a team effort at the end of the day, he said.”It’s a group of people that come together, do a job, get on with it and then do other things.”

To the stereotypical question of one highlight or lowlight out of four decades, he replied: Seeing results rather than a pile of ash.

“There’s been a lot of them, each bit of time has got bits that stick out and they drift away and something else happens.

“If you save a place or take actions that stop things escalating further, that’s the real gain.”

While he will retire from brigade life, Mr Ireland will not be gone from the fire scene and he will be using his experience to train others in fire safety.

For Mr Stevens, life will begin focusing away from fires after his retirement last month, ending a 43-year career.

Mr Stevens began as an auxiliary fireman on January 20, 1967, and joined permanently in 1971.

“I think a lot of the reasons the guys like working here is the comradeship and the teamwork, which in a lot of other jobs you wouldn’t get,” he said.

He was talked into the job by a firefighter.

While firefighting had its downsides, Mr Stevens said any regrets were fleeting. “It’s a family, really.”

The modern uniforms may not be as comfortable as the old woollen ones, but they were safer, he said. Now there were also gloves and boots that didn’t have brass screws digging into your feet, he added.

During his early years, “whoever was the top of the pecking order got the new stuff,” Mr Stevens said.

His first night on duty saw one of the largest fires in Timaru’s history. It involved several shops, an upstairs night club and part of a theatre complex in Timaru’s main street. But the one he remembered was the fatal Seaview Hotel fire in 1993.

Two people died when the hotel caught fire during the night. “It was a very, very hot fire and we were really struggling with that one.”

In lieu of responding to fires, Mr Stevens can now devote time to his other interests, like restoring, showing and rallying his Zephyr cars.

We will update the website regularly as our courses expand. We now service the North Island as well as the South Island so check the calendar to see when courses are being held near you or contact us directly to learn more.