The Trusts Saves Lives

Bill Ellis, Fire Chief in the West, says that so many lives have been saved by the smoke alarms and fire extinguishers that The Trusts gave out – free - that local media asked the fire service to stop telling them about the stories.  There were just too many.  That’s not to say they didn’t tell any…..

15 July 2004, Western Leader:  “An elderly Blockhouse Bay woman is grateful a new smoke alarm and alert neighbours helped avert a fire in her flat.”  The Trusts Charitable Foundation smoke alarm had been installed “just a few weeks earlier”.

9 May 2003, Western Leader: A woman in a Massey house is reported as seeing smoke coming from her garage.  She used the fire extinguisher provided by The Trusts Charitable Foundation to fight the fire, having first ensured her family was safe.

15 April 2003, Western Leader:  A Henderson woman and her family are reported to have escaped from their Hindmarsh Street home which was gutted, bar one room.  The person quoted said “Smoke alarms contributed to the family’s escape….If they didn’t have smoke alarms there would have been fatalities.”

Waitakere and Portage Trusts had a vision.  They wondered if it was possible to give out tens of thousands of smoke alarms – free – to households in the area, then to see the alarms installed with batteries in going order.  So far, there have been two distributions of smoke alarms - the first in 1998 to over 40,000 households in the Waitakere Trust area and the second in 2006 with a distribution of photoelectric smoke alarms to over 80,000 households in both the Waitakere and Portage Trust areas.  As if that wasn’t enough, The Trusts Charitable Foundation followed up with a distribution of fire extinguishers to all 80,000 households in both Trust areas in 2003.

“The giveaway of alarms and extinguishers had never been done in a big city like this,”  says Bill.  “Our guys could see they’d be life saving.  We wanted as much coverage in the city as we could get.  Initially we put alarms in each home, usually in the hallway of a house.  This encouraged a lot of people to buy more and put them into bedrooms.  Previously the idea had been foreign to lots of people.”

Of extinguishers, Bill says the distribution paid off immediately.  “After they distributed those, on the first day, a guy arrived home to his block of flats where there was carparking underneath and used the extinguisher to put an electrical fire out.”

The Fire and Rescue Service also provided full assistance to the elderly and disabled people to install their smoke alarms during the campaign. Overall more than 200,000 people in the West benefited from this fire safety initiative. The project was supported with advertising from the Western Leader.

As if that wasn’t enough, The Trusts Charitable Foundation have provided annual assistance to the fire service, funding rescue line kits (for over cliff rescues), lighting plants (for use all over Auckland in accident situations), pumps, protective uniforms, quad bikes (for Waitakere rescues) generators, cables, first aid kits, radios, portable winches, jaws of life and gas detectors – just to name a few assisting the 82 paid firefighters and the 225 volunteer firefighters of the Western area to help protect our communities.

The Trusts Elected Members continue to recommend substantial donations to help that vital and valued service that helps us – in fire, accidents, floods, and times of crisis.   You are our local heroes.