Katikati Volunteer Fire Brigade has purchased a new set of battery-powered tools following a $5000 donation made by charitable company Trinity Lands.

Senior firefighter Jim Pooley said the Katikati area experienced a wild weekend of high winds on the weekend of September 13-14, which kept the brigade very busy.

“The brigade responded to 29 callouts over a 12-hour period on September 14,” said Pooley.

“[The callouts were to] things like trees down, damaged roofs, fences and sheds. At times, we were a bit stretched for tools because only one of our two fire trucks had battery-powered gear on-board and our crews were responding to a lot of different callouts at the same time,” said Pooley.

“So it would have been ideal to have tools – such as our impact driver, angle grinder and saws – available on both trucks for that day.”

Pooley said he understood that Fire and Emergency New Zealand issue one set of Milwaukee tools to each fire station in the region, leaving volunteer brigades to fund extra gear needed to meet local needs.

“All fire trucks carry the essential equipment but it is great when we are able to enhance that with help from the community. I got in touch with Brett Fleming from Trinity Lands and he was very keen to help out.”

Trinity Lands community ambassador Brett Fleming said his company regularly supports fire and emergency services in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty regions, where his company operates.

“We earn our income in the Western BOP district so we want to give back to the community, and we want to give back to organisations that anyone in the community can access help from. We mainly support fire and emergency type organisations in local communities.”

Fleming said the $5000 donation was the first time Trinity Lands had financially supported Katikati Volunteer Fire Brigade and he was keen to grow their relationship further in future.