It was the result of the New Zealand Fire Service Act (1975), which nationalised the various District-level brigades that had developed across the country.

Note: The New Zealand Department of Conservation was a RFA with responsibility for firefighting within recognised State areas, including National Parks, totalling about 30% of the country.

With these two agencies included, the NZFS and territorial local authority RFAs formed the bulk of the firefighting capability in New Zealand.

There continues some contribution from Industry Fire Brigades (those run by commercial entities, for example forestry companies or Airport Authorities).

The entire organisation reported to the Minister of Internal Affairs, by way of the New Zealand Fire Service Commission.

These were the officers who are ultimately entrusted – via the Fire Service Act – with the powers that are exercised at the scene of an incident to 'deal with' the emergency.

These powers were far-reaching – they provide authority to commandeer, demolish or destroy whatever is required in the course of their duties, given no more suitable options.

In career districts the SSOs were strategically located to provide a more experienced command officer who is usually placed such that they are responded to most incidents of significance.

The Fire Service usually recruited twice-yearly, and received up to 700 applications for just 48 positions on each intake, making competition high and job prospects poor compared to other industries.

Career firefighters provided the NZFS personnel that staff the nations specialised USAR Response teams.

[1] Volunteers were on-call; when an emergency call came through, firefighters were alerted through pagers and in many small regional towns, a siren atop the fire station.

The minimum age to become a volunteer firefighter in the New Zealand Fire Service was 16, although those under 18 required parental consent.

Fire Police and Operational Support Units were exclusively staffed by volunteers and would be deployed at emergencies to provide non-firefighting functions, usually at larger-scale incidents.

Typical duties included traffic and crowd control, scene cordons and lighting, first aid, salvage, communications and logistics, and even catering.

Typical equipment included a pump (normally driven off the appliance engine via a power take-off); a high pressure hose reel for small fires and initial attack; a supply of high-pressure and low-pressure hoses for larger fires; fire-fighting foam; a standpipe and bar for accessing fire hydrants, and suction hoses for accessing non-reticulated water supplies; forcible entry tools such as Halligan bars, axes and sledgehammers; aluminium and wooden ladders; and a first aid kit with an automated external defibrillator.

[12] Other manufacturers and chassis including Hino, Dennis, Mitsubishi/Fuso, International, Dodge, Bedford and Mack had been used in the past.

Typical appliances, their functions and identification numbers are as follows: The NZFS worked closely with the NZ Police in many respects – a key one of those is that the three Communications Centres which co-ordinate the Fire Service response across NZ are colocated with their Police Equivalents in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

In contrast, the fact that police have ready and direct access to the Fire Communications Centre was occasionally of some value in terms of inter-agency liaison.

Access to shared liaison channels was also provided, allowing for Ambulance, Police, Fire and other resources (for example aircraft that may be called upon to assist in firefighting) to co-ordinate.