Asher Asher was a businessman in early Auckland who led the town’s first volunteer fire brigade. But there’s a challenge to this fact in the writings of another pioneer, William Daldy. Based on...
It is unusual to dismiss a fire chief who couldn’t do his job because the equipment he was given was deficient. To discharge two chiefs within three years for the same reason is exceptional. In hind...
On two occasions over the decades, in 1902 and 1927, Aucklanders have been rattled by a series of arsons and false alarms to the fire brigade, not knowing when and where the incendiarists would...
Charles Alexander Woolley was from a “fire brigade family” and began his career as a talented fireman in Auckland but who swapped his fire uniform and went to fight in World War One. He returned to...
This is the unlikely story of two successive Wellington fire chiefs whose personal lives cost them their jobs. It was almost incredible that not one, but two, Superintendents resigned from the same...
In 2014 the person of John Gildroy Grant was rediscovered, a young volunteer firefighter from Hawera who enlisted to serve in the First World War – and returned from the Front in France with...
The New Zealand Fire Brigade Old Boys’ Association was preparing for its centenary in 2006 and found in its records the almost-forgotten, well-preserved, photo of the grave of Salvage Corps member...
In 2020 the organisation which was the legacy of the New Zealand Fire Brigade Old Boys Association was wound up, ending an entity that was founded in 1906. These days it had been known as the New...
As is recalled in the histories of so many fire brigades world-wide, it often takes a big fire with loss of life or immense damage to galvanise townsfolk into action to provide organised fire...
Eric Sydney Bright’s name has always been connected with a tragic fire aboard the oil tanker “Trocas” on November 15th 1943 at an Auckland wharf. He died below-decks during fire-fighting operations...