National Headquarters
Fire and Emergency New Zealand
National Headquarters
Spark Central, Level 7
42-52 Willis Street
Wellington Central
Wellington 6011
Phone +64 4 496 3600
13 February 2025
Ref: 16830
Mark Grayson
[FYI request #29804 email] Tēnā koe Mark
Thank you for your request of 19 January 2025, to Fire and Emergency New Zealand, requesting
information relating to incident F4123512 that occurred at Phoenix Recycling, Takanini on 8
January 2025. Your request has been considered under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA) and
our response is below.
1. Incident Report for F4123512;
Please find attached a copy of the SMS Incident Report (SMS Report). Some information has been
withheld from the SMS Report under section 9(2)(a) of the OIA, to protect the privacy of natural
persons. In making this decision, we have considered the public interest considerations in section
9(1) of the OIA.
We have also redacted the names of personnel involved with this incident and these have been
labelled as
out of scope in the attached PDF. However, if you want their names, please let us know.
We may need to consult with the individuals concerned, which may take some time.
Please note the SMS Report provided to you is generated by Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s
electronic station management system. In SMS Reports, ‘Notifications’ and ‘Message Log’ fields
are reported in real time as fire crews and our communication centres communicate with each
other during the incident. They are not the official final records of incidents but word for word
transcripts of ‘live’ situations as they occur. They may contain spelling errors or commonly used
abbreviations.
2. Total number of 111 calls received by the Communications Centre;
Twenty-five 111 calls were received by the Communications Centres for this incident.
3. Total number of personnel who attended;
Seventeen Fire and Emergency staff were in attendance at this incident.
4. Total number of Communications centre personnel who were on duty, broken down by
centre;
Communications Centre personnel on duty at time of the incident:
• Northcom – One Shift Manager and Five Dispatchers
• Centralcom – One Shift Manager and Four Dispatchers
• Southcom – One Shift Manager and Four Dispatchers
5. What Fire and Emergency resources attended this incident?;
6. Was there any delay in resources attending this incident?;
Please refer to the first page of the SMS Report for the list of fire appliances in attendance and
their response times under ‘Responses’. A hose layer was listed as in attendance; however it was
not used.
The first appliance was alerted of the incident in under a minute of the incident start time and
arrived on scene roughly six minutes after being notified of the event.
7. What 'coverage' was maintained by Fire and Emergency while resources attended this
incident?;
Standard operational coverage was maintained throughout the incident to ensure adequate
coverage. The coverage included "cover moves" from other stations.
• Papatoetoe aerial appliance to Manurewa Station
• Otahuhu appliance to Manurewa when Papatoetoe aerial truck responded to the incident
• Ellerslie aerial truck to Papatoetoe station
• Avondale appliance to Manurewa Station when Otahuhu appliance responded to the
incident
8. Why was this scrap metal fire coded as a "Minor Incident", but in the past others have
been coded as a "Structure Fire"? (As displayed on the Incident Reporting website);
The incident event type is dependent on the type and scale of the incident. As noted in the SMS
Report, although there was a lot of smoke, the flames were minimal. The comments on page
seven of the SMS Report state it was contained to two areas approximately 10m x 10m each. A
minor incident can be used for a number of incident types. This particular event can be defined as
the following:
-
All small fires (outside property)
• No ability to spread
• No danger to property
• No danger to people
9. Why is the response between the two incidents below different? (i.e. One has 3 fire trucks
respond, and the other has 19).
The incident on 1 December 2024 was a substantially larger incident reaching alarm level 3, which
meant more firefighting resources were required to contain the fire.
The incident on 8 January 2025 was a smaller incident which remained at alarm level 1 so fewer
firefighting resources were called to attend the incident.
You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of this decision.
Information about how to make a complaint is availab
le at www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or
freephone 0800 802 602.
We trust that the information being provided is of assistance. If you require further information,
please email [FENZ request email]
Nāku noa, nā
Aidan Saunders
Manager, Information Requests
