Not many people have stuck with a job for 60 years, never mind a volunteer role.

Katikati’s Allan Evans has. The 80-year-old, affectionately known as ACE, was recognised at the weekend for giving six decades of service to Katikati Volunteer Fire Brigade.

He joined the brigade at age 20, on April 26, 1966, and hasn’t left. First a firefighter, he’s now in a support role.

Evans moved to Katikati with his parents, Laurie and Dorothy, in 1958, from Turua on the Hauraki Plains when he was 12. “They had the little shop at Ongare Point.”

He finished at Katikati Area High School in 1962 and began work at Ken Salt Engineering, located where today’s Fish Cove is on Jocelyn St. At this time that he met a girl from Hamilton, Dorothy Weir, whom he married six years later.

Allan Evans with his fire brigade medals. Photo / Merle Cave

Fire chief Des Wilson invited Evans to join the Katikati brigade.

“I thought, ‘Nah, I don’t want to be a fireman’. But I went home and told Mum and Dad. I was still single then. Dad was an ex-Army man. He said, ‘It will probably do you a world of good because it’s regimental-type stuff and you can probably go a long way.’

Evans went back to Wilson and said, “Yep, okay, why not?”

Three weeks later he answered his first fire call. Evans said the brigade had to answer the call at the old post office on Main St, where Forsight Optometrists is located today.

“I’ve got overalls on and a pocket full of electrodes and I’m streaking off down the road and Ken Salt’s yelling out the window, ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ I said, ‘I’m going to that fire call’. He said, ‘Okay’.”

Evans said the town’s fire siren was manually operated by the Telephone Exchange, and Merlene O’Neill was the operator who’d answered the call.

“I’m trying to ask her where the fire is and the siren’s screaming in your ear. She said, ‘See the smoke up the road? Follow it!’”

The brigade was based in its old home on Main St.

“In those days, the station door wasn’t even locked! You’d rip in there, jump into your boots and coat. I had to sit on the back of the brigade’s original Ford.”

He guessed Bill Purcell was driving. “It was probably where Donegal Place is now; there was a farm and a hayshed had caught fire.”

Evans said he’d spent his whole adult life in the brigade. He held the rank of 3rd Officer for 22 years until he downgraded to fire support in 2014. He and Dorothy raised two boys, Mark and David, while he served his community. Evans acknowledged Dorothy, who died in 2018, saying she was a great support to him in his volunteering role. “It was part of her life the whole way through, too.”

Why did he stick with it? “Because of the camaraderie, the friends you make with brigade members, and outside brigade members, you sort of build up a big nest of people that have done the same stuff as what you’ve done.

“And the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve saved somebody’s property or saved somebody’s life or you’ve helped somebody in a situation where maybe there’s been a death or something like that … you sort of get attached to everything, you know? I’ve enjoyed it in the 60 years I’ve been in there.”

Evans had seen many changes in how New Zealand’s fire service operates, the technology it uses and the people.

When he first began, his brigade has 16 members. Now it has 30. “I spent about 48 years of my service in the old building [on Main St]. I’ve seen an awful lot of fire trucks come aboard ... ”

He’d seen many people come and go from the brigade too. “[Current Katikati fire chief] Craig [Gray] is my ninth chief.”

Some jobs were tough. “My worst callout was my college fire; to see my classrooms going up in smoke.”

The 1988 fire burnt down three classrooms and had a major impact on the school.

“We saved it from getting into the lab, staffroom and north end of the auditorium. It was a big job. We were there for nearly two days because we had to go back to dampen down hot spots.”

Another was a coolstore fire in the old cheese factory behind where ITM is today.

“My oldest boy, Mark, was working there then. It went up overnight. Luckily, he was in bed.”

Motor vehicle accidents came with trauma, Evans said, especially those where he has known people involved.

“The old Hogan’s Bridge, over the railway line – was a regular [callout] for someone taking out the front end or the back end of the bridge or getting tangled up in the middle because it was only one-way.”

Allan Evans has many medals from his service to Katikati Volunteer Fire Brigade. Photo / Merle Cave

There have been positive moments too. “When we set out to purchase rescue gear like the jaws of life and spreaders, poles, stuff like that.”

Spending time on the main road outside the old fire station plucking money from motorists for fundraising was also a highlight. “We needed money for a rescue tender to carry our extra equipment,” Evans said.

Today he still goes to the station now on practice nights to help. “I try and get involved with the younger ones coming in, a bit of mentoring ... that sort of thing.”

Evan said it was encouraging working alongside today’s young firefighters and seeing them use new equipment and technology.

“We had the jaws of life, shears and rams but I actually made the base and sill plates, being an engineer by trade.

“We’ve since come a long way, and it’s good to see the young ones seeing how easy it is now to get into a car compared to our days when we had to use old hacksaw blades.

“To me it’s been a very interesting journey all through, and I don’t intend giving up as yet. Working for the community, it has its highs and lows – but like I’ve always said, ‘You put 100% into it, you’ll get a 100% reward’.”