The first of the 92 former Frankton Volunteer Fire Brigade members were John Martin, Trevor Walsh, Rex Dovey and Ken Newman, who, with limited equipment and resources, signed up to help protect their community.
At the formal function, ahead of an open day yesterday, Senior Station Officer Paul Halsted said there were 29 current firefighters and, collectively, the 121 people over the past five decades had attended 3841 recorded callouts.
Averaging each callout at 90 minutes’ duration, with six people per appliance, Mr Halsted said that equated to about 34,569 hours brigade members had spent helping their community.
If the 100 hours’ training, per person, was included, that came to 169,569 hours, "which is a colossal amount of work".
"I [commend] every one of you for doing that."
Mr Halsted thanked the brigade members’ families and partners, "who pick up the pieces and rally to support us to do our work", and the past and present members for the "passion and drive to work with our second family, which is the Frankton Fire Brigade, to help others", and the volunteers’ employers.
"It is a massive sacrifice and yet a rewarding one.
"You are all very very special people — our area, and New Zealand, is a much better place for having you all in it."
United Fire Brigades Association past president Russell Anderson said the "foresight and vision" of the founding members "can only be regarded as outstanding".
"Who would have thought the level of growth in the Wakatipu Basin would be what it has become today?
"You’ve only got to look at Frankton village, Five Mile, Shotover Country, Lake Hayes Estate, Jack’s Point, Hanley’s Farm, and that’s just to name a few."
Fire and Emergency New Zealand incident controller, Nic McQuillan, of Queenstown, said Frankton’s first response area covered 178sqkm and, as of the 2018 census, it contained an area population of 6200.
While no records were kept between 1973 and 1978, from 1979 to present, the brigade attended an average of 85 calls a year.
"Last year, Frankton Fire Brigade responded to 228 first pump calls.
"It gives you an indication of how things are escalating in terms of responses."
Along with vegetation and structure fires, Frankton volunteers also attended motor vehicle crashes, rescues, medical incidents, hazardous substances and materials incidents, and were called to assist by St John Ambulance or police.
They also had to be able to operate equipment such as airbags, defibrillators, hydraulic rescue gear and gas detectors.
"The risk profile’s constantly changing here — there’s the airport, the hospitals, the many multi-storey buildings; the environment itself offers massive challenges to everybody in the Wakatipu Basin.
"It’s impressive for me to have come from Auckland ... to see how competent everybody is."
Queenstown Lakes Mayor Glyn Lewers, of Frankton, said he heard the siren go off most days and six years ago, it was for one of his sons, who had a medical event.
"To have a familiar face turn up to your household, a member of your own community, made the ... situation a lot easier to deal with.
"On a personal note, I wanted to say thank you ... because I never actually got to say thank you to the fire brigade at the time."
