“We were always taught that if you can afford it and you’ve got the time, you give back to the community… that was one of our family philosophies growing up.”
Motueka fireman Sam Rubie was recently bestowed his 25-year Gold Star for a quarter-century with Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ), seven years after the milestone was reached since “records aren’t the best”.
The current probation officer in the Motueka and Golden Bay areas, says he was a livestock contractor in Waipara, North Canterbury, when he ignited his FENZ career at its local brigade in 1992, because he was able to respond to daytime calls.
“In Waipara, we had two state highways that went into an intersection on State Highway 7 and the [State Highway 1] intersection there, and everything is travelling on the road at 100 kilometres per hour,” he says.
“So, when they had a mishap, the accidents were a lot more damage to cars and a lot more damage to people… there was quite a lot of motor vehicle fatalities as well.”
Sam says car collisions with trains in his eight-year term at Waipara were also “messy”, but one callout at a railway crossing turned out to be humourous.
“I can remember one morning I was woken up a bit after midnight or 1am to a car vs train, or a train no longer operational [callout], and I thought this is not good,” he says.
“When we got up there, this train was parked there on the crossing, and we were going ‘what’s the problem?’, and they said the car came down the hill, hit the fuel line, knocked it off the train, and [the car] bounced back onto the road and there was nobody injured.
“The whole way there to the scene you’re thinking ‘what are we going to be looking at’, and then it was just like, ‘oh, ok’, so someone just had to put the fuel line back onto the locomotive and the train was able to move on!”
Sam says he shifted to Blenheim in 2000 to take over his uncle’s property maintenance business, and served at the local rural fire force for 11 years.
“The biggest [emergency incident] was the Canvastown fire, that burned 140 hectares of pine trees… that was in around 2006.”
“They had 12 helicopters fighting it and I was working on the eastern boundary up on the ridge, because when you go over the ridge it drops straight down into Havelock township, and they didn’t want the fire going over the ridge.
Sam says he became a probation officer in 2007, and he relocated to Motueka in around 2011, where he’s served at its volunteer fire brigade since.
The 56-year-old says the brigade’s comradery and his firie family had kept the fire in his belly.
“It’s not uncommon in our family, I’ve got family members that are with St John, I’ve got a sister in the fire brigade, I’ve got nieces and nephews that are with FENZ, and other family members with FENZ around the country.”
