Fire and Emergency New Zealand Wanaka Chief Fire Officer Garth Campbell said "we quite often get a lot of fires around this time but this year we have had a few big ones that have lasted for a few days and that’s the difference."
"As far as fighting fires goes, I don’t stress over it and I don’t think the guys stress about it, to a degree that’s why they joined the fire brigade to go to fires and to help people out."
Mr Campbell was in the first appliance to arrive at the Mt Alpha fire in Wanaka earlier this month. It took two days to bring under control and burnt more than 200ha of steep hill pasture.
"The first callout said it was a scrub fire threatening a house, so that’s where we come in as urban firefighters."
"It was under our command for about two hours but once it got outside that zone and on to the side of the hill it became rural and that’s when I handed it over the Otago principal fire officer Graeme Still and it was their fire from there on in."
The first night, urban volunteer fire crews from Wanaka, Lake Hawea, Luggate and Tarras remained on duty.
"It was basically an 18-hour or 19-hour callout. We sat on the perimeters at Heaton Park, where those houses were, and at the top of the camping ground, keeping an eye on the fire to make sure if it did come down we were ready to have a go at it."
Mr Campbell said it was a "bit tough" going back to work the next day.
"We’ve all got real jobs, but it’s all right, you get through it and that’s what we signed up to do."
He said the baking and the donated food from the community for the fire crews fighting the Mt Alpha fire "made you feel you are appreciated".
People were constantly coming in with homemade baking and one man came in with his two children who sold homemade lemonade down by the lakefront.
"They made $21, which is not a lot of money, but the fact that they went and did it — fantastic!"
There are 35 volunteer fire officers in Wanaka, who are on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week each month.
Mr Campbell said "if the siren goes off and we’re available, it doesn’t matter whether we are on duty or not, we come along and it’s very seldom we get a callout where we get few than 15 turn up at the station".
He said the work was changing because of the number of life-threatening medical callouts firefighters now attended.
"First thing we have to do is make the person understand why we have shown up and not the ambulance, but people are starting to get to know that might happen."
He said he can’t say what motivated him to want to be a volunteer fire officer nearly 35 years ago but but he "still gets a thrill out of driving the big red truck, squirting water, helping people and fighting fires".
