Rail crews armed to fight fires
Rail crews armed to fight fires
19 April 2013
published by www.stuff.co.nz
New Zealand — KiwiRail has invested in a firefighting unit to accompany crews doing work that could have a fire risk.
Two fires within a month at Tuamarina were sparked by a KiwiRail crew working on the rail track. The most recent was last week.
And a recent string of fires at Ward and along the Dashwood Straight were started by sparks from locomotives pulling trains.
A KiwiRail spokeswoman said yesterday the firefighting unit would now be on site for any tasks where there was a possible fire risk.
Trains were held up for three hours because of last week’s fire closing the track, she said.
The costs of that were still being evaluated.
