Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Adrian Nacey: Fire and Emergency NZ Community Safety Manager on the call to ban public fireworks sales

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Adrian Nacey: Fire and Emergency NZ Community Safety Manager on the call to ban public fireworks sales · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It's November the fifth, and we all know what that means.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: We know it in New Zealand it's sky Fork's Day,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: and it also means more debate about banning the things. Now,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Winston Peters has submitted a member's bill which would ban
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the importing and sale of fireworks, and Fire and Emergency
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: had preemptively closed access to fourteen mountains around Auckland to
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: prevent wildfire. So we joined now with by the Fire
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: and Emergency. New Zealand Regulatory Compliance Manager Adrian Nacy has
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: got up early, but I guess you always get up early,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: don't you.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Adrian, good morning.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: What do you think should we ban them?
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Well, Fire an Emergency, as you can imagine, would be
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: supportive of any changes to legislation that would reduce to
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: have from unwonted fire. That's what we're all about. So yeah,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: we would be we'd be very pleased to see some
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: change to bring further restrictions just on the sale of
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: retail fireworks to the public.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: So you don't mind with the big displays, but you
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: don't want, you know, Joe Blow having fireworks in their backyard.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great for us. The fireworks, we would just
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: prefer to be kept in the hands of the professionals.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: All right, So if this happens, is there a worry
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: that we ban them? But people go, yikes, they're banning them,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: so they stockpile and they end out using out of
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: date fireworks.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't really want people to stockpile fireworks for
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: a couple of reasons. We don't want them to be
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: set off over the summer when it gets even hotter,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: warmer and dry than it is now. And it's also
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: not a good idea to have fireworks obviously stored in
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: your home and that can present a risk to our
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: firefighters if you had something go wrong in your property
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: and they weren't aware that there were fire fireworks stored there.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Now there's a number of people who say, I'm absolutely
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: responsible when it comes to fireworks, But that's not the problem.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: The problem are the idiots. I mean, how bad are
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: the idiots?
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, we get between sort of one hundred and fifty
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: and two hundred fireworks related calls just that we go
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: to each year. It's not necessarily people being particularly reckless
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: all the time, as things like setting the fireworks off
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: when it's windy, auto close to things that can catch fire.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: So they're still legal today. So what are the restrictions
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: on letting off fireworks around the country.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: So the main thing for us around the restrictions is
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: you can only set them off in places we have
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: the landowners permission. So most councils around the country have
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: put restrictions on letting fireworks off in places like beaches
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: and parks. Obviously, Department of Conservation land is a no
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: go for setting off fireworks, and the main restrictions around
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: that is that you need the landowners permission. But the
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: main thing for us is obviously checking those weather conditions.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: As you've seen around the last couple of weeks, it
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: has been hot, dry and windy around parts of the country.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: This makes it really easy for fires to take control
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: and spread and get difficult for us to put out.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Adrian, I hope you have a really quiet night tonight,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: and I thank you for joining us.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live
• 2:58
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• 3:01
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