A very windy Saturday 13 February saw the Hutt Valley Fire Police requested to provide scene protection for a power pole collapse in Ebdentown, Upper Hutt.

The Unit provided traffic control and scene protection until the Power Company and a commercial traffic management firm could provide relief; time on scene was around 2 hours.

Members observed that the adjacent house was very lucky!!

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Hutt Valley Fire Police were amongst those responded to assist with the discovery of potentially dangerous chemicals at an address in Stokes Valley this afternoon.

Members assisted with evacuations of neighbouring properties while the NZ Police, NZ Fire Service and the NZ Army Explosives Ordnance Disposal rendered the scene safe.

Stokes Valley residents may have heard a loud 'bang' from the vicinity of Delaney Park; this was a deliberate detonation by the guys from EOD.

Hutt Valley Fire Police, along with the NZ Police, maintained a safety perimeter to keep members of the public away from the danger zone.

There's a couple more images after the jump.

Tuesday 19th of January saw a Second Alarm transmitted for a Garage fire in Woburn. The fire was reported as well involved and had started to spread to the neighbouring house when it was brought under control.

Members of Hutt Valley Fire Police assisted crews from Hutt, Seaview, Avalon and Johnsonville stations with traffic management and light refreshments.

At about lunchtime today the pagers of HVFP members lit up with another activation; this for Salvage in central Lower Hutt, and our first activation for our Salvage capability.

RIMU4926 and 4928 responded to the BCITO Offices (formerly the Timezone Gaming Arcade) on High Street where a water pipe that was being worked on had through a combination of circumstances, 'let go' of a lot of water.

Firefighters from Hutt, Seaview and Avalon responded; they helped with the initial Salvage work (saving papers and other equipment from water damage) and the Fire Police Unit with it's AquaVac's were able to extract the majority of the water that had damaged a storage area and part of an open-plan office space.

SSO Ackroyd gets his 'hands dirty' with the AquaVac.

This turned out to be an excellent 'commissioning' for our Salvage role in the Valley, and our ability to provide Salvage for the Valley should improve response times for Salvage needs in the Valley; the next nearest Salvage capability is based at Kilbirnie with our friends from Wellington Fire Support.

With a Second Alarm transmitted, members of HVFP leapt into action to assist Firefighters at a substantial fire in Maidstone - literally just down the road from Rimutaka fire station. The premises, an automotive workshop, was seriously damaged.

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The scene shortly after the arrival of the first Fire Police; the damage to the property is well obvious.

Hutt Valley Fire Police provided road closures and diversions on both sides of what is a fairly busy road, and also monitored a substantial number of onlookers. Refreshments were also served for the hard working Firefighters from the various appliances which attended, including Rimutaka, Trentham, Avalon and Wellington City paid staff, and volunteers from Upper Hutt and Silverstream VFB's, not to mention our Unit. More photos after the jump....

A well involved fire at the Stokes Valley Kindergarten resulted in a second alarm transmission in the wee hours of this morning. Hutt Valley Fire Police as part of the second alarm response provided lighting facilities and scene security until Fire Safety Officers and Police completed their initial assessments.

Stokes Valley 432 in attendance.

HVFP casting some light on the situation!

FP Roberts taking stock of our lighting situation.

Substantial damage was done to the Kindergarten.

HVFP were requested by the Stokes Valley volunteers late last night to assist with a Fire Scene on George St, Stokes Valley, that required a guard until the duty Fire Safety Officer could make an assessment - and he was responding from quite some distance. Members attended and supervised the scene until the FSO attended, and agreed with Police on their way ahead. The fire was indeed suspicious and a security guard remained with the scene overnight; HVFP were in attendance from approx 2320 until 0200.

Fire Police were requested to assist at a lines-down call in the early evening of the 25th. Members provided scene safety and traffic control whilst the power company secured the cable, understood to be a TelstraClear Cable line, that'd fallen onto the roadway on a suburban Ebdentown street.

Members of the Hutt Valley Fire Police were amongst the resources responded to a Scrub Fire on the South Wairarapa Coast on the evening of Monday 23rd. The Unit were requested to provide lighting support as part of the regional SOP for Helicopter Operations, however strong winds meant that no flight operations were able to be conducted.
HVFP provided refreshments for the crews in attendance, with both RIMU4926 and RIMU4928 travelling for around 2 hours to reach the incident.