An exemption allowing back country huts not to have smoke alarms has ended
Installing smoke alarms in hundreds of back country huts defies common sense, Federated Mountain Clubs president Megan Dimozantos says.
The Department of Conservation (DoC) says it is legally obliged to meet Fire and Emergency regulations by installing heat detectors and smoke alarms, where needed. Previously, the huts had “simplified” building code requirements because of their special character.
READ MORE: * ‘Rich’ Conservation Department is actually stretched and struggling * Crisis-hit Conservation Dept considers closures, offloads
The department’s director of national programmes Claire Spencer says the devices will be installed over the next six to nine months.
“Smoke or heat detectors are being installed in DoC huts with six or more bunks, to help keep hut users safe and reduce the risks of fires damaging huts.”
According to one DoC count, there are about 1400 back country huts in remote locations, most of which were originally built for wild animal control and sheep mustering. The department also has staff accommodation and wardens’ quarters.
An estimated cost for the work wasn’t immediately available.
Dimozantos spoke to Newsroom from Pitt Island, in the Chatham Islands, where she’s a volunteer working on the restoration of Glory Cottage.
She says people visit the back country to experience nature on its own terms and get away from “technology and beeps and noises”.
“The decision really does show a distinct lack of understanding of the unique nature of the backcountry huts network,” she says. “It’s a bit of that safety over-reach and that bureaucracy gone mad.”
Often, huts fill with smoke from hut fireplaces burning damp wood, or pots burnt while cooking on gas-powered camping stoves. That’s a normal part of hut life, Dimozantos says, that could soon trigger a smoke alarm. She thinks people won't put up with it.
“They’re [DoC] going to find that they spend all this money, and they’re not going to get the outcomes that they’re looking for.”
Installing heat detectors and smoke alarms will likely be a costly exercise, Dimozantos says, when you take into account staff time and, in some cases, helicopter trips into huts. She worries maintaining the devices, especially if they’re interfered with, will be a financial “bottomless pit”.
“It feels a bit like the common sense factor has completely missed out on being invited to this discussion.”
Stretched and struggling
Newsroom has reported on DoC’s financial woes, a situation already exacerbated by Covid-19, and which might be worsened by proposed cuts under a National-led government.
The department is already stretched, Dimozantos says, and she’s worried other important work on huts, tracks and biodiversity will be put on the backburner.
A crisis of deferred maintenance on the country’s ageing and neglected huts, tracks and structures has led to some structures to be closed. Closures and divestments are under consideration.
Critics of that plan to offload assets point to the work done by a league of volunteers from the Backcountry Trust – of which Dimozantos is the North Island project coordinator.
We asked Fire and Emergency to outline the legal requirements for back country huts.
Community education and behaviour change manager Adrian Nacey says: “Protection from working smoke alarms is particularly important where people are sleeping, which is why we encourage people to have working smoke alarms in places like caravans, tents, boats and also back country huts.
“We’re incredibly supportive of the work the Department of Conservation are doing to put smoke alarms in back country huts and the protection this will provide.
“Many DoC huts require an emergency procedure which may include smoke alarms and other fire safety measures.”
Fire and Emergency said it had been discussing smoke alarms with DoC on this matter since the start of the year.
Hut fires have plagued DoC in recent years, whether the controversial conflagrations in Te Urewera, or Taranaki’s Lake Dive hut being burnt down in 2020.
On Christmas Eve 2007, Japanese tourist Katsuya Tsuchida and his fishing guide Toshiya Babe, of Auckland, were killed when Parahaki Hut in Te Urewera National Park burnt down.
A police investigation found the suspected cause of the fire was a candle or gas cooker, and the sleeping men would have been overcome by smoke, preventing them from escaping.
Detective senior sergeant John Wilson, who conducted the investigation, backed suggestions smoke alarms be installed in huts.
However, that was absent from Coroner Wallace Bain’s recommendations, released in 2009. He asked DoC to “examine the information that is provided to hut users both at the time that they get the ticket to use and is displayed in the huts”.
