Portland

[kat]

Welcome to the list, djwiz.

I have some photos of the Portland station in my fire station photos collection (sad but true I have a large collection) and did the nose pressed to the window thing when there last.

Looks like a great facility. Does that station have a mixture of vollies and retained firies?

[corocfs]

who/where/what is portland?

[rescue5271]

Portland is a town in Victoria not far from mt Gambeir(SA) the brigade has two fire stations the main one is manned by both staff(fulltime) and vollies.I know from my old CFA days that portland also has a good running team and that they are very much a family involved brigade.I hope they still are

[djwiz]

My apologies for taking so long to reply but I only just came across this thread.

To set the record straight about Portland Fire Brigade (Victoria, CFA, approx. 100Km's east of Mt. Gambier, SA):

*Staff - ...consists of our Officer-in-charge, Operations Officer Gary Harker (former Fire Officer at Morwell CFA in the Latrobe Valley and Firefighter at Dandenong CFA east of Melbourne, the busiest Victorian brigade) who I believe is required to spend minimum 40% of his time administering our brigade and the rest looking after (primarily) the southern part of CFA Region 4 (with Headquarters ~100Km's north of here at Casterton) but as Regional Duty Officer and sometimes acting Operations Manager (formerly rank of Regional Officer) he travels the entire region from time to time. We also have a Leading Firefighter (Currently Paul Summons on loan from Morwell CFA for 6 months) on duty 9am-5pm weekdays to help with training, administration, maintenance, daytime crew numbers e.t.c. It is in the pipeline that within 2-5 years we will have a Fire Officer and Leading Firefighter on dayshift, 7 days a week and further down the track 24 hour manning. The rest of the brigade's man-power is made up of Volunteer firefighters as the CFA currently does not have retained firefighters.

*Stations & Equipment - Our main station is located in the CBD in Percy St. and has a 4-bay Motor Room currently housing a Type 3 Medium Pumper (soon to be replaced with a Heavy), 3.4D Tanker, Region Spare 3.4D Tanker, Brigade Owned Multi-Purpose Vehicle (MPV - which houses Rescue, HAZMAT, Salvage and additional Breathing Apparatus equipment) and stored in the Brigade shed at the rear of the station is our Brigade Owned Strike Team Leader's Vehicle (4WD Hilux Ute) and a CFA Trailer Pump (Volkswagen 2000LPM). This station is currently being reviewed by the CFA for renovations and extensions mostly for future 24 hour staff needs (i.e. mainly bedrooms but also extra office space, areas for laundry, a drying room, disable toilet, staff day (mess) room, bigger workshop with garage to replace brigade shed). We also have a Satellite Station at the Port Of Portland round-a-bout to provide a faster response time for members who live and/or work in South Portland (including myself). This premises is an old service station on loan for free from the Port Of Portland Harbour Trust and currently houses a retrofitted 2.2D Pumper/Tanker. Originally just a Tanker, it now has a couple of lockers fitted for B.A. and Forcible entry tools aswell as improved pump and plumbing e.t.c. VicRoads are in the progress of surveying for the construction of an overpass that will see this building demolished within the year and probably replaced with a standard CFA rural fire shed (2-bay) on adjacent land. Because of our significant industrial risk and our isolated area (next nearest major urban brigade response is Warrnambool, 100Km's East) we are grateful to have been provided with these 2 stations, several appliances and specialist equipment such as 4* $6,000 ea. Drager BG4 long-duration Breathing Apparatus sets and a $27,500 Thermal Imaging Camera (which even Warrnambool Brigade with it's 500 calls per year doesn't have).

*Risk/Calls - Our brigade only attends about 150 calls per year but we have a significant industrial risk in our area (which helps qualify us for staff and special equipment). We have the Portland Aluminium smelter which employs around 600 people with 2 large potrooms and high voltage power lines run all the way from the other side of Victoria. Portland Aluminium has it's own Emergency Response team (our Brigade captain is in charge of this under his role as Plant Health Services Co-ordinator) with a Pumper (featured on the SEM Fire & Rescue web site - www.semfirerescue.com.au ), 4WD Ute, equipment trailer and an ambulance. These appliances are crewed by employee's (one from each area of the plant per shift is trained for this, some are in our brigade and some in the local SES unit).
The existance of this Industrial Fire Service is another reason why our brigade's calls are so low as we are only called to attend Portland Aluminium for significant fires/incidents. Our other large risk is the Port Of Portland, we have the potential for large fires in indoor and outdoor woodchip piles, grain silo's, small and large trawlers and ships alongside the wharf and off-shore. In August 2002, we had a major fire in the VicGrain Conveyor Belt and called for an Aerial Appliance from Ballarat City and a Protective Equipment Van from Corio (North Geelong), both appliances are about 3 hours travel from Portland.

In concluding, thank you Kat for your interest and query, have no shame in the nose-pressed-to-the-window approach as I'm guilty of the same thing everywhere I travel. As for 'rescue5271' in not-so-far-away Naracoorte; unfortunately we don't have a senior running team these days and although we are still very family-friendly, the old-style of Mum, Dad and kids all being in the brigade has mostly ceased in recent years with those brigade members moving on to other parts of the country for work e.t.c.

I am more than happy to answer any questions about our Brigade e.t.c. and if anyone is ever travelling through the area, feel free to contact me in advance to arrange a tour through our station if your visit will fall after hours (outside the Leading Firefighter's weekday dayshift roster). Hopefully I will have our brigade web site (www.portlandfirebrigade.org.au) back up and running properly (the menu isn't currently working so only the news page displays) soon, with all the information above and more.

p.s. Some of you might like to know that our brigade has travelled to Mt. Gambier a couple of times during the last decade (1995 and 1997 I think) to step up for Mount Gambier MFS whilst they were at a major sawmill fire at one time and a major copper chrome arsonate? leak the other time. Our Captain tells a great story of an alarm (actual fire) at the TAFE College where on our arrival, the Fire Warden said "Gee, it takes them 8 minutes to get here and it only took you 4 minutes to get here from Victoria   ". Apparently we used to train twice annually with the Mt. Gambier MFS but that stopped before I joined the brigade. If anyone on this site is from the Mt. Gambier MFS, I would love to hear from you and possibly rekindle this relationship between our 2 major isolated urban brigades.

[Good times]

WOW, 150 calls!! You must have very well behaved residents and a good fire prevention plan, and no fixed alarms, half your luck!!

[djwiz]

WOW, 150 calls!! You must have very well behaved residents and a good fire prevention plan, and no fixed alarms, half your luck!!

Yeah it's dissappointing that we have such low call numbers because our OIC has to justify staff and equipment by spending hours on the phone to CFA HQ in Melbourne talking about our risk level and isolation. Anyway, I put our low call numbers down to a few points:

*Portland Aluminium has their own Industrial Fire Team and we are only called to attend significant fires/incidents out there (2 or 3 per year). This is a huge installation and they probably attend 50-100 callouts per year (alot of them alarms and small fires but if they didn't have the I.F.T. we would be attending for that).

*Protected Premises (Fixed alarms) have got most of their bugs worked out (we monitor around 20 premises) and alot of them are only industrial sprinkler installations that might call us out once every three years when the plumber comes along and forgets to isolate the system for maintenance.

*The local police rarely call us to Motor Vehicle Accidents (for potential fire suppression, the local SES is the RAR unit here) of which we have our fair share in this area.

*Portland is not a through road on the highway for major travel routes like Warrnambool - Mt. Gambier and Melbourne - Adelaide, therefore we miss out on several car & truck fires (we do support for larger incidents like roll-overs and fuel tanker fires though) that give places like Heywood (25Km's north of here) a few calls despite their population of only ~1000.

*We are immediately surrounded by mostly rural brigades with low call numbers and therefore our support calls are low. Our next nearest major urban brigades are around 1 hour travel in each direction (Hamilton, Warrnambool and Mt. Gambier SA).

Having said all that, hopefully with the introduction of VicFire Ballarat (Country Call Taking), our calls will go up for Motor Vehicle Accidents and support calls as brigade support arrangements are analysed by the book and not by the local group base with (supposed) local knowledge. Currently, integrated (staff & vols) brigades outside of outer Melbourne (the B.E.S.T. C.A.D. area) still take their own calls until the E.B.A. is soughted out between CFA and the UFU. Soon not only will our calls and paging be handled by them, but we are also supposed to be getting radio repeaters with a relay back to Ballarat so they can handle our radio traffic aswell (no more Watchroom duty yay!   ).

[strikeathird]

100km 'WEST' of Mount Gambier... ?

[djwiz]

100km 'WEST' of Mount Gambier... ?

Thanks for the observation, edited.

[strikeathird]

[kat]

Wow - thanks for that - that's fascinating reading.

Do you do stuff like confined space, ship firefighting training?

So how big is Portland actually? I realise the risk there is significant but some of our communities would be more than green with envy about the resources you've all obviously worked extremely hard to obtain.

100 km to the nearest urban type response is not far in the context of South Australia's rural and isolated communities. And some significant risks in these areas are covered by a handful of vollies and a rural truck or two.

The MVA thing must be frustrating - will an ambo or police officer have to be hurt before they realise that appropriate fire cover needs to be in place? So does the CFA have road crash rescue units?

[djwiz]

Wow - thanks for that - that's fascinating reading.

Do you do stuff like confined space, ship firefighting training?

So how big is Portland actually? I realise the risk there is significant but some of our communities would be more than green with envy about the resources you've all obviously worked extremely hard to obtain.

100 km to the nearest urban type response is not far in the context of South Australia's rural and isolated communities. And some significant risks in these areas are covered by a handful of vollies and a rural truck or two.

The MVA thing must be frustrating - will an ambo or police officer have to be hurt before they realise that appropriate fire cover needs to be in place? So does the CFA have road crash rescue units?

Portland's population is around 10,000.

Confined Space Training is a specialist course offered to us from time to time. The South West Area (CFA Regions 4 & 5) have simplied rescue down to 4 urban brigades, Portland, Warrnambool, Hamilton & Casterton (Casterton don't have an SES unit and do RAR, high angle e.t.c. aswell).

As far as ship firefighting goes, our brigade has made a habit of doing a large ship inspection on a training night every 6 months, with the ship's fire warden's/co-ordinators giving us a tour and talk about their on-board fire equipment and risks. The CFA has only just woken up to how bigger risk the Port and Ships are to our brigade and there was a major ship firefighting course run for us and some surrounding support brigades back in early 2003 run by ex-Naval Senior Firefighter Brett Pollini who was an Instructor for the CFA South West Area and has now taken up a position in training (particulary C.F.B.T.) in SA (MFS/CFS?).

The MVA situation is very frustraing. It's very hypocritcal of the local Police who are more than happy to tail along behind a fire truck going to an incident which we don't require (and haven't called) them but then as the co-ordinator's of MVA's, fail to co-ordinate the essential services.

Police: "MVA, we'll go and take a look. Oops, he's trapped under the car and looks hurt, better call the ambo's"
Ambulance: "we're gonna need the SES to lift the car off before we can work on him"
SES: "hrmmm, we're not touching the car until you get the fire brigade here to cover our asses"

...One day, that person under the car won't live until all the services are on scene to rescue him/her.

[Mike]

Is truly a scary thought...... and unfortunatly not only experienced by the few.  

Makes you wonder if they actually think about what they're going to sometimes!

[rescue5271]

Had a tour of portland station and met a few of its vils and the two paid staff who work out of there and it was nice to share some storys of CFA staff that I have worked with over the years but also to share some cross border things like radios and appliances. Thanks for the coffee DJ but next time mate tim tams go well with coffee..

[djwiz]

For anyone over the border that might be interested in a listen, there's now a repeater for VicFire (South West channel) at Jones Ridge, near Dartmoor. CFA Ch#241 - Frequency 163.525MHz.

[rescue5271]

Thanks DJ works well mate....