Saturday, April 5, 2008: Even before the pagers started to beep at 16:42 hours, many people knew something had happened and thought it might pay to head down to the station.
Those are the opening words of a report on the Icepak Tamahere fire in the Hamilton Volunteer Fire Brigade’s latest newsletter.
“Hamilton isn’t a huge city and word spread rapidly through the bush telegraph that there had been a major explosion within minutes of it occurring,” the report continues.
“Even if you didn’t hear about it, the huge cloud of thick black smoke appeared overhead with amazing speed and could be seen for miles around. Our appliance is on automatic turn-out for 2nd alarms so as soon as SFF Cameron Grylls transmitted the message, advising fire fighters had been injured and an explosion had occurred, we were attached to the call.
A crew of 5 responded, very unsure of what to expect on arrival. Only minimal details are provided on the pager message and the brief radio updates en route provided fairly sobering listening. Traffic was heavy and had backed up to the intersection of Cobham Drive/Cambridge Road by the time we came through. Passing the lines of cars under lights and siren we pulled over ourselves several times to give safe passage to the ambulances coming in the opposite direction, transporting injured firefighters to the hospital.
We could just make out the ambulance officers working fervently on their patients and this made us even more apprehensive as to what we would find.
A firefighter faces the Icepak coolstore inferno
Passing by the site as we entered the Airport Road turn off, we could feel the heat through the windows and clearly see the flames above the roadside shelter-belt. It was incomparable to anything we’d seen before. On arrival our O/C reported to the command unit for tasking and we were instructed to proceed around the corner and assist with the last remaining injured fire fighters.
This entailed driving close by the burning coolstore to get to the triage area, giving us our first good look at the actual fire area. Windows were quickly wound up again to shield from the heat. On arrival next to the school tennis courts, two patients remained under the trees being treated for burns and blast injuries with neither of them being immediately recognisable to us in their condition. Our crew went into action immediately on two fronts, firstly assisting with first aid and loading our colleagues into the waiting ambulances and secondly to move the rapidly swelling crowd of onlookers.
Frustratingly, much of our subsequent tasking involved keeping an incredibly large number of stubborn onlookers out of the operational area. Many people broke the cordons and put themselves – and others – in danger to satisfy their own curiosity and take pictures.
Throughout the evening and well into the night our crew assisted everywhere and anywhere performing as wide a variety of tasks and assistance as can be imagined. Appliances and crews came from all over the region to assist including the crash tender from Hamilton Airport which was ironically crewed by our OIC, SO Craig Meads, who happened to be on shift that day.
At one point late in the night the airport crew was comprised entirely of personnel with a connection to our Brigade – an ex-member, our current OIC and our latest recruit. We also met briefly with a crew from the Auckland Volunteer Fire Police who brought their mobile canteen vehicle and an ablutions trailer down.
Our initial crew stood down between 1 and 2am that night only to be re-attached at 8am. Limited crew availability with some personnel already away for the weekend meant this time we responded short-crewed with 3 people. On arrival we found a crew from Rotorua Volunteer Operational Support had arrived during our absence and AVFP had departed. Operational Support tasks at this point had scaled back to providing light welfare and manning the cordons. Towards 11am our small crew arranged with Te Awamutu Volunteer Fire Brigade to take over the Southern cordon while Rotorua would continue until later in the afternoon as they had a relief crew on standby to come through if needed.
The following week was a blur of activity both at our station and at City HQ but our operational commitment continued with a third response to the site on Thursday to assist manning the command unit and site entry point. During the planning for SSO Lovell’s funeral we were honoured to be asked to usher at the service and take part in the guard of honour as his casket left City HQ, which we duly undertook.
For the serving members of HVESC, the event is one that will be etched into our collective memories for a very long time.”
