This is a new initiative designed to improve operational safety when responding to retail fuel sites, called the Emergency Services Information Summary.

There are over 1300 fuel retail sites (service stations) across New Zealand, an increasing number of which are unattended and on average we respond to one incident at a service station every week.

Victor Lenting, our Flammable Liquids and Bulk Fuel Advisor, says we currently hold little information about individual sites that we can readily use in the event of an emergency.

“Emergency Response Plans (ERPs) required under Health and Safety regulations do not usually present information relevant to Fire and Emergency in a simple or easy to access form. We are reliant on what may be available on arrival at the incident, which can be very limited and result in delayed action. This is even more so if the site is unattended.

“To address this, we have worked with the retail fuel sector to develop a simple template for emergency information (the Emergency Services Information Summary) in a standard format that operators of service stations (attended and unattended) can complete and submit to us.

Victor says being able to view key information about these sites during an incident creates better situational awareness, ensuring we can keep our firefighters safe and respond effectively.

“The summaries will enable us to fill a key information gap for service stations, as an alternative to a site report. The template is designed to be accessed from the Mobility tablets in our appliances on the way to a call, so the layout of the information has been developed with that in mind.

“The template is available on our website for operators to download. At this stage we will be promoting its use through our industry contacts at a national level so for the initial period we are not looking for our Districts to contact site owners or promote the initiative to them directly. Over time we expect there will be an increasing uptake of the template by site operators as they see the benefits for their own businesses.”

There is more information on the Portal.

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