SA Firefighter

Wasn't there recent bitching on here about brigades self-responding to jobs, how is having a Group Officer respond to every job any different?

They arent being turned out by anyone and the SOPs state fairly clearly what they are permitted to respond to (2nd alarm fires, MVA persons trapped etc), so why are they responding ?

I agree with Alex, if it happened in our area I reckon our brigade officers would be pretty shirty in having a GO there every call taking control and then handing back to them to take over once the bulk of the job was done. How are the brigade officers going to get any experience at all.

I  can almost see that this could be justified in areas where the brigades struggle to get a truck out the door, but we are talking about an area only 10km's from the CBD of Adelaide that generally turns out two or three trucks to nearly every job.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_RcFP_aMxA

Interschutz is the world's largest fire and emergency services exhibition. It takes place once every five years in Germany. The exhibition is best described as massive with the one in Leipzig covering six huge halls, a large outside static display area and a demonstration area.

The report from the CFS Manager of Infrastructure and Logistics is available from the CFS Members section of the CFS website.

http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/members_only/equipment_comms/travel_reports.jsp

Some interesting information there, including an admission that the current CFS appliances are poorly stowed.

Worth a look.

A mate of mine was in a brigade in a fairly well known grape growing district, one job he told me about was at a call to a fire alarm at the local hospital.

He was the only one to respond to the station so he rang the Group Officer to confirm that another brigade was being responded. The Group Officer's response was to tell him to take a drive in his own vehicle out to the job and reset the panel. This was when my mate was new to the CFS and didn't know any better. Scary to think that this was only a year or so ago.

Thankfully there has been a significant change in personnel in that Group and things are starting to slowly improve.

Yes that is an issue Alex. I can't understand how come the Regions sign off on the WFAM response plans with just one brigade on it, in some cases to A Class facilities. Seems like you are just asking for trouble.

Quoteor just change the act to remove the stupidity....

That would be too easy, wont happen.

So if the SES take the 132500 number, and take a job that is a P1 response who is overseeing that they also respond the fire service ??

There must be some accountability by these guys to ensure the correct response is followed, do we need to embed some CFS / MFS staff in there to ensure that they are playing by the rules, or do we just continue on as we are at the moment and 'trust' that they will do the right thing.

Interestingly on the weekend I observed and overheard on the scanner an SES vehicle responding P1 to a tree down approximately 20 mins away through heavy metro traffic and passing 3 CFS and 1 MFS stations on their way. Closest most appropriate, I don't think so.

I can see that we need to fall in to line with the Act, and that there have been many brigades that have been breaching these rules for a long time and have now come to rely on these people for the good of their brigade, but boy oh boy this is going to cause a big shakeup in some of those brigades and groups.

Standby for some interesting times.

FAIL !!

Definitely of a lower standard than when it was put together by CFS staff who actually had an idea. Poor grammer in a number of articles, captions that are poorly worded or just wrong, and more articles stolen from local newspapers than those actually contributed.

This was obviously a slap dash effort to try and keep to their timeframes.

Bring back the CFS staff that actually gave a crap about the Vol Mag and actually spoke to vollies, the SAFECOM staff shoved down on Level 6 just have no clue.

BTW it is interesting that a number of people at my brigade have also commented that this is a dull read.

I dont think it is any shock to anyone that Pt Augusta have been struggling lately, you see quite a number of messages requesting more crew from them or mr McNamee letting everyone know that one or two crew are not enough.

It's interesting listening to the retained guys, there are not too many occassions that they get out the door in under 5 mins, most of the time is 7 or 8, and then there are some stations that struggle to crew at all.

Just goes to show that paying people isn't the answer to crewing issues.

I have it from a good source that there is currently work underway to remove volunteers from the 000 call taking process completely.

Basically all 000 calls will go straight through to the Adelaide Fire lines and not the alerts, then if Adelaide Fire want more info on who to respond they will call you on your Alerts after the initial page has gone out - as is sometimes happening now.

There are a couple of technical issues being worked on at the moment but I am hearing that it will all happen in the next few weeks.

I know that some brigades use their Alerts alot and are well disciplined and do well to extract info from callers, so is this going to have an impact on your operations. I haven't heard this being discussed 'Officially' and suspect you will be told about it once it is done and therefore too late to change.

What do you think, it was going to happen eventually with SA-CAD but I would have thought there might have been some notification about it prior to them pulling the plug.

Hey Bill, I also heard a few staff had resigned in the last week or two, but 9 is a lot, especially out of a workforce of 90 odd

The ones I heard were

Tim Davis from HQ
Simon Vogel from Region 6
Narelle Rawnesly from Region 2
Neil Ellis from Air Ops
Anthony Thorpe from Region 1

Who else is going ??

Maybe the staff get treated as well as the vollies and that is why they are all leaving, I guess this means less people to look after our needs for a while.

The land was purchased from the Land Management Corp. last year, it is on Quinliven road from memory. I think I have a copy of some paperwork around the place about it.

Yes Aldinga is on the list, once Seaford is up and running I think Aldinga is going to be next, it's no surprise really with the amount of housing going in up there.

It would be interesting to see if the CFS remain rescue down there once that happens.

I heard Willunga were struggling for Hazmat crews to turnout to jobs, the first offer will be given to any Kyeema members but so far there hasn't been a lot of interest, so Morphett Vale and Seaford were offered the chance to train some members. As Matt B said, the idea came from Region.

With the removal of Hazmat from Yankallila there is now more of a reliance on Willunga to get a crew for these jobs, there is nothing else on the Fleureiu apart from MFS at Victor and Strath CFS.

Quoteand finally if it is mfs area and we are the only truck going we send what we see fitting!!!

That would explain the two appliances to an MVA in MFS area last night, I was wondering what prompted that.

How do you know if MFS are going or not though ?? You cannot rely on the page as quit often you will be only one on the initial page but another MFS appliance will be added to the job shortly after.

Given that the first Severe Wx Warning was issued at around 1630 yesterday, with updates every 3 hours, and the fact that the one that was paged out was just another routine 'update' (the same as all the ones prior), and also the fact that the warning actually stated that the severe winds wouldn't reach the settled areas until around 0700 at the earliest (for the West Coast), and also the fact that messages on the Regional Maildrop need either the DSC or RDO's permission I think we can safely say that someone screwed up.

Thanks B Shift.

06:48:37 19-08-08 PRIMARY ALARM, I3: FIP BUILDING 717, EL ALAMEIN ARMY CAMP ( Cultana Training Camp), 10 km WEST ON OLD WHYALLA ROAD, PORT AUGUSTA MFS Pt Augusta Response

07:00:15 19-08-08 There is a Fire call and two personnel can not take truck need more thank you MFS Pt Augusta Response

Hmmm, 12 minutes and only two people at the station and no default brigade responded, surely this is unacceptable.

In one of the other threads I thought someone said that the retained stations need to default just the same as the CFS do - it appears as though they don't think so.

I wonder if the UFU will crack the shits at the MFS and start writing reports like they did with a certain CFS brigade that struggled to get out the door.

Ian Tanner from DEH is heading over.

Barker are getting a new 34P this year to replace their 24P, not sure if that is really an improvement to the situation for them though.

QuoteGood to see the 003, 003L and the 004 getting some lovin'.

It's actually called a 604 key, for info the 003 comes in a short and long version. All officers should carry at least one of each, if not make sure they are in your truck somewhere.

MFS: *CFSRES INC012 05/03/08 08:09,RESPOND Private Alarm,LOT 666 RIVERBANKS RD,HILLIER MAP 31 L 4 TG102,PRIVATE DWELLING,DALK19 CFS Dalkeith Response

MFS: *CFSRES INC012 05/03/08 08:21,RESPOND Private Alarm,LOT 666 RIVERBANKS RD,HILLIER MAP 31 L 4 TG102,WITH DALKEITH,GWLR00 CFS Gawler River Response

DALK: *CFSRES: STATION MANNED FOR FIRECALL 05-03-08 08:21 CFS Dalkeith Response

DALK: *CFSRES: MORE CREW REQUIRED FOR THIS INCIDENT 05-03-08 08:24 CFS Dalkeith Response

MFS: *CFSRES INC012 05/03/08 08:36,RESPOND Private Alarm,LOT 666 RIVERBANKS RD,HILLIER MAP 31 L 4 TG102,,GAW359 CONC00 MFS Gawler 359

MFS: *CFSRES INC012 05/03/08 08:36,RESPOND Private Alarm,LOT 666 RIVERBANKS RD,HILLIER MAP 31 L 4 TG102,,GAW359 CONC00 CFS Barossa Group Officers

MFS: *CFSRES INC012 05/03/08 08:45,RESPOND Private Alarm,LOT 666 RIVERBANKS RD,HILLIER MAP 31 L 4 TG102,WITH MFS,ROSE00 CFS Roseworthy Response

MFS: *CFSRES:concordia RESPOND stop, ( for private alarm 05/03/2008 8:48:01 AM CFS Barossa Group Officers Response

MFS: STOP FOR CALL CFS Roseworthy Response (08:51)

Now I did not hear the radio traffic associated with this call so I am only guessing that this was not a going structure fire - if it was and all the other brigades were turned out as a result of an upgrade then please dismiss my further message.

If however this was a standard Private Alarm and the other resources were responded as a result of brigades not being able to get a crew then I will begin my own hypothesis on the incident.

First of all why are Dalkeith being responded to Private Alarm by themsleves, this is a two appliance response which for nearly all EMA brigades would indicate a two brigade response (rural brigades will only ever be paged singularly because BOMS is not setup with their data). EMA brigade zones should be setup with two brigades for any structure fire type incident.

If someone in Dalkeith was switched on enough to realise this should be a dual response call why does it then take 12 minutes to respond another brigade, or if  turning out Gawler River was a result of no crew at Dalkeith then again I ask why does it take 12 minutes to default. Obviously someone must have acknowledged the page with MFS or they would have defaulted them after 4 minutes, so therefore whoever does the acknowledging then takes on the role of ensuring a suitable response occurs, in any case after 4 minutes if you have not heard any appliance respond you should be thinking about defaulting.

After 15 minutes Dalkeith still don't have a crew - no problems we all have those days sometimes, but then MFS from Gawler and Concordia CFS are responded 27 minutes after the initial response. Surely if you push the more crew button after 15 minutes you should be contacting Adelaide Fire immediately to inform them that we cannot respond you had better turnout someone else in our place.

Roseworthy were responded 36 minutes after the inital call, I am assuming this is because no other CFS brigade had actually managed to crew a truck and the MFS  from Gawler were wondering why they were deep in CFS area without them there.

So about 30 minutes after the initial call someone might have actually arrived, god help us if this was a going job.

I have my 'armchair expert' hat firmly attached to my head so I would love for someone involved in this call to fill us in on what actually happened, hopefully it is nothing like I have explained otherwise the whole thing is just an absolute joke.

Isn't it going to be a Mazda Bongo van with a knapsack and a pair of tin snips for rescue.

Out of interest how much urban primary response area do Burnside have now, looking at a map of the MFS / CFS boundary you wouldn't think they have any. How can they justify getting the $330k from CFS that would have gone to a Type 2 when other urban EMA brigades are still in dunger 24's and 24P's.

Not starting a war just interested.

Interesting to see a SES State Rescue Officer standing on the top of the ladder without any PPE or even gloves on. Only a tabard and a helmet, setting a great example there boss.

Apart from that it looked like a good effort by those involved, even though it was a pretty shitty job.

Yeah tell your Group Officer to pull his head out of the sand Robert, the SES cant be everywhere when a big storm comes through and it's very likely that the CFS will be responsible for cutting up some trees.

Once you have a chainsaw on board you can also perform some cool roof ventilation techniques or RCR cuts like the yanks do.

Go the Stihl...

Well said Strika, unfortunately the CFS hierachy has lost touch with the volunteers in many many ways. This issue is just one of many where they clearly do not understand what the vollies want, no wonder our operational firefighter numbers are now down to 6000 (thats not a typo).

The sooner some of these people actually start working for the Volunteers and not against them the sooner our numbers may actually increase.

If you guys want the star on a blue shirt with pink dots and orange stripes then just go out and get them. Our brigade bought blue shirts and took them to a screen printer, he printed what ever we wanted on them. You can also find many embroiderers that will also put the star on whatever you want, just make a couple of calls - it wont take you long.