New Zealand's rural communities rely on volunteers to maintain fire and ambulance services, but recruiting new members is a constant challenge. Shannon Gillies spends some time with North Otago groups to see what the future holds.
The volunteer model for the rural emergency services relied on by so many country communities is fragile and flies in the face of a changing society as people become time-poor, say those involved.
St John's Kurow station manager Carol Harding, for example, says to run the area's single ambulance service with a double crew through two shifts every day, she would ideally have 28 volunteers.
But there are only 300 people in Kurow, meaning about 10% of the population would need to volunteer for the service to reach the desired numbers.
The service has seven volunteers: three emergency medical technicians, four first responders and one resource administrator.
If they cannot turn out for some reason, ambulances have to respond from Oamaru or Waimate, 40 to 50 minutes away.
Kurow always had an issue with recruitment because of its small population base and rural location and she believed it would take only a couple of volunteers to leave and St John would have to start assessing if it was worth having an ambulance in the town.
"We can't lose any more of our volunteers.''
Kurow Medical Centre practice manager Jules Elliot said smaller areas could not afford to pay their emergency services and areas such as Kurow were lucky to have people volunteer to be firefighters and ambulance officers.
"But moving forward, I don't know how it's going to work.
"It's a fragile model.
"It's the only option we've got, but I don't think it's fair to rely on volunteers, but I don't know how you fix that.''
She described the task of emergency service volunteers as thankless.
"You can't go far. You can't socialise. It's a huge commitment.''
She would not say the model was broken, but did say times had changed and the way people lived had altered.
"Our lives have gotten busier. I just think it's harder for people.''
She said it was a situation that would benefit from government funding in future.
Otematata Volunteer Fire Brigade senior firefighter Deborah Simpson said fire brigades were vital cogs for every community in a civil defence emergency.
"If you lost something like this, people would leave in droves.''
Palmerston St John manager Tania Bungard said interest in volunteering at her station spiked following media attention in July.
At the start of the month she had had nine volunteers.
Following a public plea for more people to volunteer so she could realistically keep the station's one ambulance on the road, six more locals had come forward and were undergoing training.
"That's amazing. It was starting to get pretty stressful and numbers were quite low and it put pressure on everyone else.
"We were having to take the ambulance off the road on the odd occasion because we just couldn't field a crew.''
She believed several aspects of volunteer emergency services needed to be reconsidered.
The work of paid staff and some volunteers was equal, for example, and those volunteers were expected to match the performance levels of their paid counterparts.
There might also be a point where emergency services had to consider paying people to keep services going in rural areas, she said.
Volunteering New Zealand says many services in regional centres have been struggling after years of population drain.
Chief executive Scott Miller believed rural areas had relied on unpaid volunteers to man the majority of their emergency services, with the exception of the police, because of a culture of volunteering in those communities, but that was being eroded.
"It is a concern, with declining populations who will pick up the slack when these people do leave the regions and move to the cities.
"Think about the local services that have left the regions, like banks and post offices.
"There are a lot of competing requirements and people are working longer hours, but I think people and organisations need to look at how they create opportunities for volunteers to get involved and stay.
"Everyone is competing, unfortunately, for almost the same person.''
New Zealand Fire Service chief executive and national commander Paul Baxter said reliance on volunteers to man emergency services in rural areas was historical.
"Something happened in a community so the community itself gets together and decides to do something about the risk.
"That's really the history of the fire brigade, ambulance, coastguard and surf life-saving.''
There was no way the costs of fielding paid crews in all regional stations could be covered, he said.
The centres that had paid crews were where the service believed there was a higher rate of risk to the public, such as places with higher populations and higher numbers of residential, commercial and industrial buildings.
Volunteer urban and rural fire units were to be merged into one body, to be called Fire and Emergency New Zealand.
It was due to come into effect next year.
"A big part of that is improving services to volunteers and providing better background support to them and training.''
It was still unclear whether volunteer fire brigades would pick up more ambulance duties in the future, he said.
"It's something we want to do in a controlled way.''
Communities would have to assess for themselves in some areas what services would be available to them, he said.
"What is the risk in the community and what do they want or need, and what are the people in the community prepared to offer the community as a response?
"It's a conversation that needs to occur with the community.''
