Unsung southern hero honoured at Parliament
John Munro is manager of Locator Beacons NZ and one of the south’s unsung heroes, having helped save countless lives all over NZ, and last week he was honoured with an NZ Search and Rescue Gold Award (Support) in Wellington.
The 2022 NZ Search and Rescue Awards were presented by the Hon Kiri Allan, Association Minister for Transport, in the Grand Hall at Parliament last Tuesday. There were 22 nominations with two Gold Awards and seven Certificates of Achievement awarded.
The NZ Search and Rescue Gold Award (Support) honours a very significant contribution over a sustained period and John was recognised for his outstanding work which has had a marked impact on the search and rescue sector in New Zealand.
Founded in Tuatapere in 1996, John has been involved with the Southland Locator Beacons Charitable Company, and its parent Trust, since its inception. He became the Trust Chairperson a year later and was instrumental in the development of NZ’s first personal locator beacon hire agency, which hires and sells affordable personal locator beacons. Since then, John has led the drive to ensure locator beacons are available in 92 outlets around NZ, and is now the largest locator beacon rental operation in the country.
About a third of the beacons are for use in the Queenstown and Southern Lakes region, and the operation’s beacon rentals have increased by 30 to 35 percent since 2020 with sales up by a similar amount. In October 2020 the charitable company - founded when John and his mates decided too many people were going missing and not being rescued in time, set up a partnership with Macpac stores. Between then and March 2023, over 6000 beacons have been hired through Macpac alone with the rest of Locator Beacon NZ’s outlets matching that again. The operation has conservatively rescued more than 800 people in 28 years, about 20 percent of whom wouldn’t have made it otherwise, with John on call 24/7 at the Tuatapere base.
John is passionate about saving lives and is greatly humbled by last week’s award. He says the best part is hearing the stories of lives saved, but the beacons also save millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. A study commissioned by Great South in the 10 years up until 1994 showed search and rescue operations had cost the taxpayer $10.1 million in that time.
Each beacon is registered and holds each person’s details including personal vehicle registrations and where they are parked, as well as emergency contact details. A beacon activation alerts the National Rescue Coordination Centre, and John at the base. He then provides the centre with those details.
There have been countless lives saved, many in this region with the Southern Lakes region NZ’s outdoor playground, says John.
“We have about 550 locator beacons spread far and wide.”
Wakatipu LandSAR, Wanaka LandSAR Canyon/Swiftwater Team and Fiordland LandSAR, Heliworks, Southern Lakes Helicopters and Southern District Police were among a long list awarded Certificates of Achievement for a complex search operation near Milford Sound in March last year.
