SA Firefighter

Renmark SES and MFS share a building - the main problem there was the cost of the facility as everyone felt that in the long run it would have been cheaper to build two separate facilites...

I agree with the comments about "less volunteer friendly facilities" as that is certainly the case at Mt Barker, where all volunteers have to sign in, have a visitor's pass and rely on paid staff to let them in.  The (security) complications when we attend the Regional Ops Centre to assist are (to me) incomprehensible.

We (at Adelaide Hills SES) are supposed to be co-locating with St Johns - which will benefit both organisations - but this process appears to be in trouble due to the delays in getting a block of land.

Play safe kiddies

Chatty

Just a couple more thoughts...

Yep, the little tacker in the pic would have to qualify as our youngest member - he's the son of one of my female members (who lives, breathes, drinks and eats SES) and I couldn't resist hijacking the photo
William is also my "adopted" grandson...

As for the bloke who had his application rejected from SES because he lives too far away - that decision would have been made at a Unit level.
I have members who live 30+ minutes away - as well as quite a few who are 15 or so minutes away - and they form my "second response" team.

The idea is that my closest members get to the Unit first, respond with one vehicle and get to the scene.  The second responders can then either back them up with a second vehicle and/or additional people or are able to attend any subsequent jobs that may come in.  This has worked well as quite often the first team will get to a job and find it's not what we were told and will get the second team to bring additional equipment or whatever with them.
And how many times have we had one job come in to be followed by a second while we are still travelling to the first?

Be safe people

Chatty

Sorry folks, been a bit busy lately with job interviews and such - but some interesting posts recently.

Yes, both organisation's names lead to problems - fire isn't the only thing CFS (or MFS) do - and "emergency" is just so vague...
That's why David Place is re-branding SES as "SES RESCUE" to emphasise our rescue role.

Interestingly, David flagged in a recent newspaper article that he can see a time in the not too distant future when the public won't perceive separate agencies - they will just perceive one big emergency/fire/rescue/search/USAR/whatever organisation...

There is a tendency to get get caught up in the mine is bigger than yours syndrome - it's a really good reason why there should be more cooperative training exercises between the services!
And yeah - I bet that most SES/CFS members don't know what is on the average vehicle from the other service.

What I was trying to get at with the name thing is that SES don't do fires (that's why we have a CFS) and CFS don't do "emergencies" - in terms of things like search, USAR, vertical rescue, etc.

I think there is too much of a tendency to badge RCR as "real" rescue and everything else as just playing games.  For my money, crawling through a collapsed structure (or a cave) looking for casualties is one of the scariest things you will ever do gives you a whole new perspective on rescue.

Much as I like RCR, if I never have to cut another screaming kid (or adult) out of a car I wouldn't be too upset.

Something that I didn't convey well is that the two services complement each other and can work together well if some people swallow their egos and try to get along - and those people are in both services!

As far as RCR goes, I personally think that in the Adelaide Hills the current system where CFS provide second response to CFS is shortsighted and asking for trouble as there will come a time when the CFS will be fully involved in fire fighting (the Hills is ready and waiting for another fire disaster) and a road crash will happen.  The only choice will be to pull fire fighting resources out of that battle to attend the road crash.  Wouldn't it make a whole lot more sense for SES (who can't fight fires) to attend the RCR in those circumstances?

So, for my money, lets work towards CFS backing up SES when they can, and SES backing up CFS when the brown stuff hits the rotating blades - that's why I would like to see my SES Unit develop an RCR capability.

Play safe people

Chatty

When we say "public relations" and "community service" we are talking about things like the Christmas Pageant (6+ hours), the Royal Show (this year 5 days of 14 hours each for our Unit) and other time-consuming efforts - I don't have a problem as racking them up as jobs, and our reporting system specifically requires that we do.

As for calling you guys in to help - that has been a problem in the Hills due to the traditionally poor relationship between CFS and SES.  A couple of us (from each service) have been working on solving that problem and I think you'll notice more inter-service cooperation happening in the future.
But we also start getting into issues of equipment levels and training - we are much better prepared than the average CFS Brigade to deal with storm and rescue jobs.  For trees alone we have 7 chainsaws and 2 pole saws...

And I have to say I feel guilty about calling CFS in on wet nights when you don't have wet weather gear and we do

Chatty

Ok, let's establish some basics here:

1 – SES and CFS are here for the one purpose – to serve our communities and provide them with the best damn emergency service we can

2 – CFS is primarily a fire-fighting organisation – sure they do some RCR and other things, but the name says it all – Country FIRE Service

3 – SES is primarily a rescue organisation – and we do a lot of other things, as the name says - State EMERGENCY Service

As far as the counting of incidents goes – I cannot remember ever attending multiple incidents in the one street, except for a couple of occasions where one tree has nuked two houses – that counts as one job.  So, our incidents are invariably all over the place, and when major storms hit the Adelaide Hills it is not unusual for our vehicles to rack up 500km each over a period of two or so days.  Each job counts as one incident in those circumstances.

Where one tasking extends over more than 24 hours, each day is written up as a separate incident, as that accurately represents the change-of-shift which with CFS would be accomplished by calling in another brigade.

Using the above criteria, Adelaide Hills SES attended 205 incidents last financial year, for a total of 4080 man hours and 13,857 km travelled.
A break-up of the incidents gives the following stats:

Animal Rescue          3 occasions
Storm Damage         151 occasions
     Wind                 98 occasions
     Flooding                 53 occasions
Powerlines         12 occasions
Community Service     40 occasions
Public relations      15 occasions
Communications         3 occasions
Evacuations            4 occasions
Fire Support         22 occasions
Hazards present         65 occasions
   
Traffic Control         29 occasions
Emergency Ops Centre  16 occasions
Transport         19 occasions
Vehicle Entry          1 occasions

And yes, I know that when you add them up, it adds up to more than 205 – that's because some jobs have multiple components...
These 205 jobs were managed with two vehicles – a "light rescue" Ford Courier 4WD and a "medium rescue" Mitsubishi Canter 2WD, both of which are well and truly past their use-by date!

We have over the last 12 months also provided base camp support to CFS at both the Eyre Peninsula and Kangaroo Island fires – a role we are both happy and proud to undertake.

Adelaide Hills SES covers an area of around 1,000 square kilometres, ranging from Callington in the east, Meadows in the south, Harrogate / Woodside / Basket Range / Piccadilly / Summertown in the north and Mylor / Aldgate / Stirling / Crafers / Bridgewater to the west.
And for the record, Adelaide Hills SES is the only non-metropolitan SES Unit that does not have a road crash capability.  In fact, we don't even have any powered hydraulic gear – only a very ancient set of hand-pumped gear.

Much has been said of our response times.  For the record, in the last 24 months there have been TWO occasions where the Unit took longer than 10 minutes to respond to an incident page, and neither job was a life-threat situation.  Our typical "out-the-door" response time for a life-threat incident is less than 5 minutes and less 10 minutes for storm damage and the like.  Because of our area of coverage we have to travel long distances to some jobs (especially those on our boundaries) and that adds to the time it takes us to actually get to a job.

Added to this is that, until recently, CFS responded to virtually everything "lights and sirens" - SES very rarely did.  We now have new guidelines that enable us to respond to more things as Priority 1 or 2.

What particularly irks me is that on a couple of occasions we have been accused of taking an hour or more to respond to a request from CFS for assistance.  I am more than willing to share our records with anyone, and what they will show is that on those jobs the CFS person responsible (no name, no pack drill) for calling us has waited an hour or more to actually place the call, and then gone back to their CFS members and said "Oh, I called SES an hour ago, I don't know where they have got to..."

Play safe people

Chatty

You could see myself and another SES member on Channel 7 - dunno about Channel 9