Новозеландская пожарная служба: структура и организация.

The NZFS was somewhat unusual, internationally, in that it had jurisdiction over the entire country with no division by region or city. It was the result of the New Zealand Fire Service Act (1975), which nationalised the various District level brigades that had developed across the country.

The New Zealand Fire Service was predominantly configured as an Urban Fire & Rescue Service. The Fire Service Act placed responsibility on the NZFS for firefighting in gazetted Urban Fire Districts, totalling about 3% of New Zealand's land area but covering 85% of the country's population. The remainder of the land was covered by Rural Fire Authorities (RFAs) that acted under the Forest and Rural Fires Act. Fire Service brigades responded outside their Districts to deal with structure and rescue incidents, and usually undertook the initial suppression attack on wildland fires. Note: The New Zealand Department of Conservation was a RFA with responsibility for firefighting within recognised State areas, including National Parks, totalling about 30% of the country. The New Zealand Defence Force remains responsible for all Defence Areas as defined through the Defence Act. With these two agencies included, the NZFS and territorial local authority RFAs formed the bulk of the firefighting capability in New Zealand. There continues some contribution from Industry Fire Brigades (those run by commercial entities, for example forestry companies or Airport Authorities).

The entire organisation reported to the Minister of Internal Affairs, by way of the New Zealand Fire Service Commission. The Commission was composed of five members, and the Minister was required by law to appoint at least one person who was either a fire engineer or had experience as a senior operational fire fighter. The New Zealand Fire Service Commission was also the National Rural Fire Authority.

Beneath the Commission were the positions of Chief Executive and National Commander. At the time of dissolution both positions were filled by Paul McGill. Where the Chief Executive did not have operational fire fighting experience, a separate National Commander was appointed to be the most senior operational fire fighter in the country. The National Commander may have taken control at a particularly serious incident, though this happened very rarely. The Chief Executive had a number of direct reports, though these were concerned with matters such as human resources and finance rather than operational matters.

The New Zealand Fire Service employed 1,713 professional career firefighters, 444 support staff and 80 communication centre staff. Each career fire station had a number of watches (shifts). Full time career stations have four watches, red, brown, blue and green, rotating on a "four on four off" schedule: two 10 hour day shifts, followed by two 14 hour night shifts, followed by four days off. Combination career and volunteer stations may have had a yellow watch, in which career staff work four 10 hour day shifts per calendar week, having one weekday, Saturday and Sunday off. Non operational staff were "black watch", and work a regular 40 hour week. Career Firefighters responded to 70–80% of the incidents the NZFS attended and protected around 80% of the population. Career firefighters numbers were relatively stable with low turnover. The Fire Service usually recruited twice yearly, and received up to 700 applications for just 48 positions on each intake, making competition high and job prospects poor compared to other industries. Initial training for career firefighters was done on an intensive 12 week residential course at the national training centre in Rotorua that covered not only traditional firefighting subjects but others required of a modern professional Fire and Rescue Service. Topics such as; urban search and rescue (USAR), motor vehicle extrication and hazardous materials. Career firefighters provided the NZFS personnel that staff the nations specialised USAR Response teams. Additional specialised training was provided for these personnel, however all paid career firefighters were trained to a baseline USAR 'Responder' level.

Career firefighters made up only 20 percent of the New Zealand Fire Service's firefighting manpower; the remaining 80 percent of firefighters were volunteers, who received no payment for their time or labour. The 8,300 volunteer firefighters belonged to the 360 volunteer fire brigades, Initial training was done within the local volunteer fire brigade at their weekly training nights and culminated in a seven day residential recruit course, normally held at the National Training Centre (NTC) in Rotorua or the Woolston Training Centre in Christchurch. Training included hose drills, ladder drills, portable pumps, and breathing apparatus use (BA), which was carried out in BATB (Breathing Apparatus Training Building) and RFTB (Realistic Fire Training Building) simulators. The BATB is a gas fired training facility and the RFTB is a live fire scenario.

The NZFS also engaged volunteers in non firefighting roles, to provide support in a non firefighting capacity at emergency incidents. These were variously engaged as Fire Police (FP) (sworn as Constables under Section 33 of the Fire Service Act) or as Operational Support (OS) (carrying out a similar role to Fire Police, but instead acting under the delegated authority of a Chief Fire Officer under Section 28 of the Act). Volunteers engaged as Fire Police or Operational Support were classed as operational personnel but were not trained or medically cleared to wear breathing apparatus; they were ranked similarly to operational firefighters and issued with the same uniform, but were identified on the incident ground by their distinctive blue helmet colour, and PPE optimised for visibility and poor weather operations. FP/OS personnel were either attached to an operational fire brigade, or established into standalone units in their own right. The largest established Volunteer Fire Brigade in New Zealand, Auckland Operational Support Unit (also known as the Auckland Volunteer Fire Brigade, and previously as the Auckland Fire Police Unit), had a membership of 60 and in the 2015 calendar year, members responded to more than 700 incidents. Knowing that upcoming legislative changes would repeal Section 33 of the Fire Service Act, NZFS ceased swearing new Fire Police Constables around 2011 2012 and instead converted its remaining Fire Police to Operational Support. Fire Police and Operational Support Units were exclusively staffed by volunteers and would be deployed at emergencies to provide non firefighting functions, usually at larger scale incidents. Typical duties included traffic and crowd control, scene cordons and lighting, first aid, salvage, communications and logistics, and even catering.

The New Zealand Fire Service operated around 850 fire appliances, including conventional pumping appliances and specialist appliances, and 330 support vehicles. Fire appliances were given a three or four digit number for identification; the first two digits specify the appliance's resident station (numbers may be repeated between areas), while the last one or two digits specify its function. An example being "Newlands 291" – 29 indicated the appliance is resident at Newlands fire station in Wellington, and 1 indicates its function is a pump. These conventions carried through to the successor organisation, Fire and Emergency New Zealand.

The NZFS worked closely with the NZ Police in many respects – a key one of those is that the three Communications Centres which co ordinate the Fire Service response across NZ are colocated with their Police Equivalents in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The radio network used by the Fire Service for its nationwide coverage was provided and supported by the police, although most urban areas provided for an exclusive Fire only radio channel or channels. In rural areas, the channel may have been shared between both services. Generally this was an acceptable arrangement, though when either the Police or the Fire Service are particularly busy in an area with shared radio services, this could cause the other service some grief. In contrast, the fact that police have ready and direct access to the Fire Communications Centre was occasionally of some value in terms of inter agency liaison. At the scene of an incident, VHF and UHF simplex frequencies were generally used. These were usually common between NZFS, NRFA, DoC and NZDF firefighters and discrete from the police. Access to shared liaison channels was also provided, allowing for Ambulance, Police, Fire and other resources (for example aircraft that may be called upon to assist in firefighting) to co ordinate.

The New Zealand Fire Service was one of the key developers of the Coordinated Incident Management System which is now in widespread use throughout the NZ Emergency Services environment. This provides for a common set of terminology and procedures which lends itself to multi agency incidents.