Anyone have a clue as to why there is a blanket of smoke over the western suburbs in Wellington? I noticed a haze as I was driving up Glenmore street toward Karori, now that I'm home and I'm looking across at Northland all I can see is smoke and the smell is terrible! I think every fire engine from the Karori station just drove past my door as well!
sbiddle: There is a scrub fire in Takarau Gorge Rd. Quite a few NZFS trucks there as well as rural fire force and a helicopter or two.
The fire is under control now.
Its a bit of a mess the way we fund/organise emergency services in NZ. We have the split between rural fire services from the council and the centralised NZFS. Rescue operations are tasked by the Police, while the private ambulance service that eventually takes the rescued people to hospital are paid by ACC (i think) but need a contract from the area health board to run the service. If its really big, Civil Defence get involved, and nobody is quite sure who runs what. Emergency services concentrate mostly on day-to-day jobs like fires and simple rescues, but the resources on standby for disaster readiness seem to be spread across the local council and various rescue agencies. Not much preparedness seems to go into hospital emergency rooms that can barely cope as it is.
I am not an expert at all, but I dont think we are really prepared for an organised response to a major disaster such as volcano or earthquake, despite the practice run they did in Auckland recently after complete failure of the previous practice.
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sbiddle: There is a scrub fire in Takarau Gorge Rd. Quite a few NZFS trucks there as well as rural fire force and a helicopter or two.
The fire is under control now.
Its a bit of a mess the way we fund/organise emergency services in NZ. We have the split between rural fire services from the council and the centralised NZFS. Rescue operations are tasked by the Police, while the private ambulance service that eventually takes the rescued people to hospital are paid by ACC (i think) but need a contract from the area health board to run the service. If its really big, Civil Defence get involved, and nobody is quite sure who runs what. Emergency services concentrate mostly on day-to-day jobs like fires and simple rescues, but the resources on standby for disaster readiness seem to be spread across the local council and various rescue agencies. Not much preparedness seems to go into hospital emergency rooms that can barely cope as it is.
I am not an expert at all, but I dont think we are really prepared for an organised response to a major disaster such as volcano or earthquake, despite the practice run they did in Auckland recently after complete failure of the previous practice.
You think that scenarios bad; the day to day running of the ambulance service is borderline working. Only 75% funded by the government the rest must be made up via charges ie. $45 a ride or donations. Most services rely on volunteer staff to 2nd man the truck. When we compare this to say the fire service – 100% funded, do approx 3 call outs a day (4-5 man crew) compared to a single ambulance who does approx 7 call outs a day (2 crew). The service is struggling with day to day, imagine a natural disaster!!!
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