President's Report 2014
Coastguard Lake Taupo Annual General Meeting
September 9 2014
President’s Report
On behalf of your committee I sincerely thank all of our volunteers and their families for their thousands of hours of donated time on standby, in training, in maintenance and on operations. For the first 8 months of this calendar year our volunteers have contributed 50000 hours, including standby hours, to Coastguard Lake Taupo.
We recognise that there is often considerable personal cost imposed on volunteers with regard to family time and vehicle expenses.
We acknowledge the support of our partners, the NZ Police, the Harbourmaster and his team and St Johns Ambulance.
We offer a special thanks to Mariners Radio for their manning of radio services and to Greenlea Rescue Helicopter who work with us in training exercises and on rescue operations.
We thank the team at Sail Barbary who, with the support of several local businesses, organised a fundraiser for us at this time last year. Many local businesses donated food and refreshments and valuable items for a fund raising auction.
Thank you to Mighty River Power for their annual sponsorship of $15000. Without this assistance we would struggle.
Mention must be made of Trev Terry Marine who keep our engines in a high state of readiness and have partnered with us to enhance our membership.
To the committee, thank you for your continuing attendance at meetings and positive contributions that have enabled the unit to continue to operate successfully.
I wish to acknowledge the particular commitment of Hugh, Julie and John in their respective roles as Secretary, Treasurer and Executive Officer.
It is the dedication of our Unit Safety Officer, Mike McSherry and Unit Training Officer, Martin Tulett along with John Bates, Gary Piper and Mike Rohloff and others that enable the implementation of the new training matrix and entry into the Marine Operators Safety System.
We offer our thanks to Peter Shepherd who has taken a step back from active crew duty but still remains available as a skipper and crew member. Peter also remains as a board member on CER representing the Lakes District and just to date Peter now represents Coastguard Eastern Region on the Board of Coastguard New Zealand. Thank you too to Peter Fage who is stepping down from committee after serving many years and we thank him for his duties as Lottery organiser in recent years. Another to whom we owe thanks is Eric Carr who has served as a member and president but is now stepping aside from committee.
Other active members deserving of our enduring gratitude are Ray Morison and Peter Aurisch who have a never ending job maintaining our radio communications.
We acknowledge the valuable contributions of Warren Tillson who earlier this year relinquished his positions of Unit Safety Officer and Vessel maintenance officer to pursue his interest in regional training.
Mention must be made of Don Scott who is the Coastguard leader of the local Incident Management Team and who is involved in the continuing evolution of Incident Management and Communications at both regional and national levels.
And finally, we offer our sincere gratitude to our 567 members who support us with an annual subscription. Coastguard requires the continuing support of its subscribing membership to remain viable.
To round off the acknowledgements the committee is very pleased and proud to announce that Coastguard Lake Taupo was awarded the Eastern Region Unit of the Year trophy and at an individual level, Don Scott was presented with both Communications and Incident Management Volunteer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year awards.
Currently our manpower consists of 5 Incident Management Controllers, 22 fully operational crew and 14 radio operators. In addition we have 6 new recruits undergoing training. We expect the recruits to be fully operational early in the new year. Our ranks have been enhanced by three of our operational crew earning their masters qualification which now gives us nine individuals qualified as masters and three who have achieved instructors’ qualifications giving us five instructors.
During the past 12 months it became very evident that some of our equipment had reached the end of its economically repairable life. With the help of a $9,000.00 grant from Baytrust, CGLT has replaced:
- Slow and obsolete computers and software to enable more reliable and efficient tracking of our vessels and to ease the secretarial load.
- Our night vision glasses with thermal imagers.
CGLT also replaced stabilising binoculars and the line thrower without the assistance of grants.
In 2015 we will replace the air bags on CRV Taupo Rescue at a cost of approximately $7,500.00 and as soon we can raise approximately $45000.00, the 2X250 HP engines on CRV Taupo Rescue will be replaced. This fund raising process is underway.
Following the Pike River disaster, the Christchurch earthquakes and a number of marine incidents involving commercial craft, legislative changes to health and safety regulations have directly affected us. In accordance with the Marine Operators Safety System we are required to submit an Operator’s Plan explaining what we do and submit Standard Operating Procedures related to health and safety. We are subject to audit and our paperwork is required to accurately reflect our operating procedures. Our policies and SOPs are subject to biennial review. These days that review is required to be something more substantial than the President and Unit Safety Officer signing and dating existing SOPs and saying they are OK. Furthermore, we are required to have a control system in place for our documents. The good thing about this is that any time members and volunteers need to refer to policies and SOPs they can access our website where the documents reside and be confident they are reading the most up to date version.
During 2013-2014 our Unit Safety Officer with the collaboration of our instructors and skippers reviewed and upgraded many of our standard operating procedures. I expect that over the 2014-2015 year the review and upgrade will continue with the same vigour. The review and upgrade process is never finished.
At the beginning of February this year, Coastguard Lake Taupo, in collaboration with the Harbourmaster, Police and Greenlea Rescue Helicopter, saved two young men from certain drowning after their dinghy capsized in rough conditions in open water.
In 2008 Price Waterhouse Coopers, in a paper prepared for the Accident Compensation Corporation, estimated the cost of a drowning to NZ society at large to be $3.4 million, so it is evident that from just a cold hard economics perspective, even though our callouts are fewer in number, our presence remains essential. During the year to date, CGLT been involved in 7 search and rescue operations and 18 non emergency calls for assistance.
CGLT continues to participate in a number of community events. Mostly our costs are covered as we are providing a service e.g. during the Taupo District Council’s New Years Eve fireworks display we provided two vessels and 6 crew which involved 12 hours vessel time and 36 hours crew time. Our charge was $1610.00. On the other hand one of our crews, using the jet boat CRV Mighty River Power, accompanied 40 young Tuwharetoa people in two large waka from the control gates bridge to Reid’s farm. There was no charge but we have now established a happy relationship with Tuwharetoa who wrote us a very special thank you letter for the assistance we were very pleased to provide.
To say our training programme is full on something of an understatement. Our training officers have over the last several weeks been coming to grips with the new syllabus. Using this syllabus they have embarked on delivering training modules to our new recruits on Thursday evenings and offering 2 to 3 hours practical work on CRV Taupo Rescue and MRP Rescue on weekends. This will continue weekly till the end of this year and then in the new year more advanced training modules will be delivered weekly to the already operational crew. It is gratifying to note high attendance levels and that includes already operational crew who are attending to refresh previous training.
Over the coming 2014-2015 year I would like to see our committee, with the help of our volunteers and supporters, report more of our activity with words and photographs on our web site, on our face book page and if possible in the local press.
On a national basis members can expect to see over the next several months, progress towards national membership with the likelihood of a uniform subscription throughout the country and considerably enhanced benefits to paying members.
I look forward to working with a proactive committee and the various specialist sub committees and crew members who maintain our readiness to respond effectively and safely when the pager is activated. I congratulate all of you for your continuing enthusiasm and dedication to this very worthwhile organisation.
Gary West
President