New landslide awareness module

Published: 20/12/2023 | Operational, Safety, Health & Wellbeing | National

In July 2023, Fire and Emergency received the findings of an independent accident investigation into the fatal landslide incident in Muriwai that took the lives of two of our own.

One of the findings focused on Dynamic Risk Assessment and in particular landslide awareness. It recommended that we:

Review policy, procedures, and training programmes to lift firefighter awareness of the hazards associated with landslides and in particular the warning signs of an imminent landslide.

We have now released a landslide awareness module and ask that all operational personnel complete this. The module covers:

key factors that create landslides
landslide warning signs and response considerations, and
the safest location to set up response operations where there is the risk of landslide

It takes about 20 minutes to complete the module and quiz, with additional resources available at the end for those wanting to work through this as a group.

Thank you to everyone who supported the development of this mahi (work). Special thanks go to those who shared their knowledge and experiences as part of the module:

Sean Vincent, Senior Firefighter and Logistician USAR
Dr Jan Kupec, Geotechnical Specialist USAR
Hamish MacDonald, Senior Station Officer
Josh Nicholls, Senior Firefighter and Technician USAR

The module is available on our Learning Station. Follow this link(external link) or go into Learning Station and search for 'landslide awareness'. Record your completion of training in SMS as you normally would; you can find it under the “Learning Station” group and task type “Landslide Module Training Record”.