Matata Fire Brigade news
March, 2013
The Month of March was a bit busier for us with 8 callouts. Seven were medicals and one was to an illegal
camp fire.
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At the end of February on the on the 27th, we were called to an elderly resident who had fallen over and
was experiencing bad back pain> the next day on the 28th ,we were called to a young lady staying with
friends at the D.O.C. camping ground opposite our town who with high temperatures and fast pulse rate,
was suffering a bad infection in her body and the ambulance quickly took her off to hospital.
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On the 9th of March, we responded in the appliance to the reserve next to Murphy’s Camp to an illegal
camp fire. On arrival it had been put out by the campers who must have heard our siren go off. We
explained that there was a total fire ban due to the drought conditions.
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Later on the 15th we responded to a medical to another of our elderly residents complaining of chest
pains. After doing all our vital signs checks we assisted the ambulance and one of our crew drove the
ambulance into the hospital.
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On the 16th we responded to a local who had a Cardiac arrest.
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The 29th of march saw us go to an elderly resident, where we did the usual checks and tests and then
assisted the ambulance when they arrived
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The last one on the 31st was another medical to a resident needing to go to hospital and once again our
crew did the preliminary checks and assisted the ambulance on arrival
The Whakatane and Opotiki District Council intend testing the recently installed Tsunami warning system connected
to local fire station sirens at the following stations:
1. Whakatane,
2. Ohope
3. Matata
4. Opotiki
5. Waihau Bay
The test will be conducted on Sunday 7 April 2013 at 1000 hours. A test consists of each station siren running at full
pitch for a period of two minutes there will be no rise and fall as for a normal incident. Note the signal for a real
incident is a ten minute straight blast of each siren. In the case of a real warning siren it is only there to get people to
turn on their radio’s to the local radio station and listen for instructions It may be a tsunami but it may instead be
something else like an early warning for flooding or maybe an impending earthquake or volcanic eruption. So it is
really important that when the emergency warning siren (a ten minute straight blast of each siren) that you don’t
assume what is the issue but that you turn on the radio and find out
If you are interested in joining us, then contact one of the officers below, or turn up at the Fire Station at
7pm on a Monday night.
Chief Fire Officer Brian Dobson
Deputy Chief Gavin Dennis
3222 118
322 2253