Kiwi firies taste Bundy
New Zealand firefighters talk shop with ERS

SSgt Ross Fothergull (left) NZDF and Sgt Dominic Sola (right) ERS at 161 Recce Sqn’s postion on Excercise Predators Gallop. Photo by Cpl Damian Shovell, Army newspaper

By Cpl Damian Shovell

NEW Zealand firefighters joined the Emergency Response Squadron (ERS) in keeping a watchful eye on tinderbox conditions during Exercise Predators Gallop in the Northern Territory.

Sgt Dominic Sola, ERS, described conditions as “extremely dry,” when explaining how his eight man section was tasked with protecting 161 Recce Sqn’s air field at Willaroo Station approximately 450 kms south of Darwin as its first priority, with the aviation group second and several kilometers of pastoral land stretching almost to Katherine third.

“Our job is not really training, this is operational for us,” he said.

“Because if something does happen, its not an exercise, its an actual on the job, hands on type thing. So when other units come out here to train for deployments, we’re actually deploying. If there’s a fire, its not pretend, and if an air craft comes in its real time for us.”

Joining the ERS section for a look at how their Australian counterparts do business were three New Zealand firefighters on Predators Gallop as part of the 1 Bn RNZIR group.

SSgt Ross Fothergull from Waiouru and two others from Burnham Camp on the south island travelled around the exercise to get an overview of how the Australian ERS teams operate in the field.

Their visit coincided with 161 Recce Sqn conducting regular hot-refueling on seven Kiowa helicopters and as the squadron practiced new refueling procedures on Black Hawk and Chinook in preparation for the arrival of ARH.

SSgt Fothergull said visiting the ERS team provided a valuable insight.

“Up until now we’ve predominately just covered rural firefighting, hazmat and road accident rescue, which fortunately hasn’t been required,” he said.

These tasks are similar to those his unit provides in New Zealand where they cover a large portion of the state highway and have a rural role similar the ERS role and a garrison role as well as providing support to the civilian sector.

“As part of our normal duties we look after our training area of 65,000ht in total, that’s about 30-40 per cent of our workload.

“The remainder is focused around structural type fire fighting and road accident rescue which is about another 30-35 per cent of what we do.”

The Kiwis deployed on July 5 with the initial Kiwi contingent as part of the first group to deploy to Mount Bundy before joining the ERS sections on July 14 at Delamere near Katherine.

“For those eight days we were on our own at Mount Bundy, we had a few small fires, and once the Australians turned up we got some really big ones,” SSgt Fothergull joked as he went on to admit, “...Kiwis now hold the record for the largest amount of burnt out area on Mount Bundy.”

SSgt Fothergull said in comparison to fires in New Zealand a small fire in Australia, which is probably about 300ht, is about three to four times bigger than what they face at home and that firefighting techniques here are slightly different with less emphasis on aerial water bombing.

SSgt Fothergull and Sgt Sola agree that one of the future advancements in their shared trade lies in further developing urban search and rescue skills for both in the field and on operations.

The ERS team held two rural fire tenders, and an aviation E1 Titan (aviation crash rescue vehicle) in 161 Recce Sqn’s location along with hazmat and wild fire suppression gear.

Sgt Sola said the ERS team had also found time to conduct some fire training and Infantry Minor Tactics during the exercise, however, the real treat was conducting NBC training.

“The idea was to initially put our guys through it, just to requalify them, and because we had enough capsules, we opened it up and did six guys from CSR and about 58 guys from 161 Recce Sqn.

“Their SSM was extremely grateful and everyone that did it got something out of it and they weren’t disappointed, they were actually smiling after it.”