Meet Roydon Barnes

5 MINUTE READ

Would you know how to help in an emergency? Quick thinking and fire warden training helped Fonterra Forklift Operator Roydon Barnes keep a classroom of five-year-olds safe after their school hall was engulfed in flames.

On a Wednesday morning at the end of last year, after working the night shift at the Co-op’s Te Rapa site, Roydon got a text from his wife, Hayley. “She had left her phone at home and messaged me from her watch, asking me to bring it down to Puketaha Primary School (Waikato), where she teaches new entrants.”

Roydon arrived at the school at around 12pm and was met with an emergency event that was quickly unfolding. A lightning strike had hit a power pole and set the school hall on fire. 

“When I came around the corner, I saw smoke coming out of the roof of the hall next to my wife’s classroom. My first thought was that the fire alarms weren’t going off and I realised the lightning strike had knocked out the alarm system.”

While the teachers and kids were following their emergency plan and evacuating the classroom, Roydon says that without an alarm to alert everyone, he wasn’t sure if there were any kids hiding inside.

“Everything we’ve been told in training is to not run into a burning building, but my adrenaline kicked in. I thought, if my child was still in here, I would want someone to run in and check. I was thinking about my wife and all those kids, the little five-year-olds feeling scared.”

“I ran in and did a big sweep and made sure no one was there.”  

There were only two fire extinguishers in the hall, so Roydon ran into classrooms to grab some more. He emptied five extinguishers while trying to control the flame, buying time to make sure everyone was safe before the firefighters arrived.

All the training Fonterra has given me gave me the confidence and courage to tackle the situation, as well as making sure everyone was out and in a safe place.

Roydon Barnes, Forklift Operator, Fonterra

“The hall filled up with smoke quickly, from the roof to the carpet. Even though I was covering my face with my shirt, I was breathing in smoke and knew I couldn’t stay in there any longer. I’d done all I could.”

Once the support services had arrived, Roydon was checked for smoke inhalation in an ambulance.  “I’d had to rip one of the extinguishers off the wall, which left me with a bit of a scratch, but otherwise I was fine.”

Roydon followed the safety precautions and spoke to his manager before heading back on his night shift that evening. “I rang my manager, and he asked how I felt, and if I wanted the night off. But I was all good, I had a shower and a feed and took it in my stride.”

The school’s classroom will need repairs and the hall will have to be rebuilt, which will require some community fundraising, says Roydon. “The school has been part of my life for the last nine years. My son is now at high school and my daughter is in Year Seven. I’ve gone on every camp, every sports trip – I’m known as ‘Camp Dad’.”

If Roydon hadn’t intervened, the whole school may have caught on fire. Even so, he says the real heroes are the kids and teachers for following their evacuation plan. “They knew all the drills, remembered their plan and knew what to do.”

Reflecting on what he calls the ‘unreal timing’, Roydon says he was in the right place at the right time. “When my wife asked me to bring her phone down, I initially wasn’t going to because I needed to sleep after working night shift. It just so happened that when I decided to go to the school, I arrived just as the fire was in the roof.”

While the instructions on how to use a fire extinguisher are written on the bottle, Roydon says a lot of people wouldn’t know what to do under pressure. 

“All the training Fonterra has given me gave me the confidence and courage to tackle the situation, as well as making sure everyone was out and in a safe place.” 

In addition to fire warden and extinguisher training, Roydon says he’s grateful for the first aid courses he’s been on too. “I love the first aid stuff. It’s great to be prepared for things that might happen at work or at home.” 

“Every two years I go on a first aid refresher, which covers things like CPR, cuts, and breaks.”

Born on a dairy farm in Pahiatua, Roydon left school at 16 to milk cows. When his eldest daughter moved to Hamilton, he followed and soon got a job working at the Co-op’s Te Rapa site. After a stint at the Crawford Street site, Roydon returned to Te Rapa and last year celebrated his 20-year anniversary working for the Co-op.  

Roydon is a proud supporter of Movember and has raised almost $10,000 for the charity over eight years. “Last year was a hard time for people, so I put a physical challenge out there. I saw on Google it was 1,200kms from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island, so I rode a push bike to work, covering those 1,200 kms in a month.” 

Roydon’s manager, Daniel Petersen, says Roydon is a staple in his local community. “He’s a pillar of the Te Rapa Distribution Centre and always goes above and beyond, setting a standard to be replicated where possible. Fonterra is lucky to have him on board.”

In his free time, you can find Roydon spending time with his kids, at sports practices or school trips. When he can, Roydon enjoys watching the league, or pottering in the vegetable garden, where he tries to grow something different each year.