Over 20 firefighters of the Puaikura Volunteer Fire Brigade will finally celebrate the long-awaited extension and upgrade of their station at Aroa Nui Hall in Arorangi this Friday.

The opening will be a great milestone not only for the brigade but also for the communities as a whole in light of fighting against the blaze around the island.

Station officer Tarina Moorfield emphasised that their response service will become more efficient with the new resources such as the automatic garage door and the external door straight into the engine bay. This means that when they respond to a fire, they will go directly to the engine bay and raise the garage door immediately, instead of standing there and holding the button or pulling the chain to open it.

“It’s been many hours and hours of work gone into this project and it’s a good feeling to be able to finally have an official handover ceremony and not end the project but just to complete the project and then be able to operate out of the new station with all our new resources at a much higher level or standard than we were delivering,” Moorfield said.

“We can get the truck started, we can get our gear on and we can be out the door in minutes. It’s much quicker than we were doing prior to having the extension to the station and it also means that both our trucks are in, it’s located in one place and they’re both secured in the same place.”

The official opening on Friday, starting at 5pm, will be followed by the blessing of not only the facility but also the new fire truck which has finally arrived, as well as a firefighting skills demonstration on that day.

The Puaikura Fire Station not only has three emergency vehicles, but also a new training facility for emergency medical response and new safety gear.

The brigade is a voluntary organisation that survives on donations and funding from Social Impact Fund.

The station upgrade has been funded through the Japanese’s Grassroot Fund and the new fire truck was donated by Fire & Emergency New Zealand with shipping covered by Matson.