Firefighters train with new equipment
Collingwood firefighter Paddy Gillooly uses the brigades’ new rescue spreaders to remove a door. Photo: Neil Wilson.
Collingwood and Takaka volunteer firefighters have had expert training in the use of their recently updated rescue equipment.
Arapawa fire district training officer Paul Manson was in Takaka last weekend to take members of the two brigades through simulated rescues using the Holmatro spreaders and cutters that the Collingwood and Takaka communities have assisted their brigades to buy. Door mounts, hinges and sills were no match for the easily applied power of the rescue equipment. Access to the interior of the vehicles, where the injured drivers and passengers would be, became much easier once the spreaders and cutters had done their work.
The practical exercises involved the systematic destruction of some written-off vehicles but, before the fire-fighters got to handle the equipment, they had a theory lecture on the capabilities of the equipment and its optimum application.
Neil Wilson
