SA Firefighter

I hear that a few brigades, lead by a couple of Region One Group Officers made a visit with appliances to the Emergency Services ministers office today.

Sounds like the meeting was a warning, with a bit of a list of things that we need i.e. better stations, more money for paid staff for training, an actual increase in brigade budgets instead of the decrease we have seen over the last few years, more tankers in the hills etc.

I believe the people involved got their point across, also pointing out that there is a major international sporting event about to be held in Adelaide and that next Sunday there could be a large rally of CFS resources at this event. There is talk about one strike team from each nearby Group.

Todays event was not designed to attract any media attention, but with sirens and lights going at a big event in the middle of the city I think there is sure to be some considerable attention given to our situation.

Well done to those involved, I think this is only the beginning of what could be a promising campaign in the lead up to a state election.

Quote1908950 22:26:39 29-12-09 MFS:1: *CFSRES INC093 29/12/09 22:25,RESPOND To,CORNER OF COLVILLE RD & RYAN RD,WHITES VALLEY MAP 224 M 6 TG132,FROM SAPOL. SOME BRAIN SURGEON HAS SPILL,ED APPROX 8 LITRES OF OIL ACROSS THE RD., NEED KITTY LITTER

Slightly unprofessional, not to mention it pushes the message needlessly over into two seperate messages. This results in the response tone only activating for about a second before the next message containing the brigade names is received on the normal tone.

Does anyone have any info on this appliance yet. 

I hear that it cost a fortune and looks pretty ordinary - that aside does anyone have any specs on foam / water output ??

Who has time to get changed before heading off to a firecall, if I did that there is no way I would make the truck.

If I know it is going to be a long job I might grab a long sleeve shirt off my hook so I can wear it later when a jacket is no longer necessary, other than that it whatever I have on at the time.

I believe these are also user programmable, with up to 16 addresses available. Look out all those super cranks that want to get all the SigInc and MFS pager messages.

http://www.apollowireless.com/servlet/DownLoad?DOWNFILENAME=Gold%20programing%20instraction.pdf&DOWNFILENAMEURL=/upload/Downloads/1/1138923530555_0.pdf

They also come in cool colors like Cranberry and Smoke.

They are actually a more sensitive pager than the current Samsung ones, although they are a bit larger. Lots of CFA nufties have been buying them themselves as they are short of pagers over there too.

If brigades want to purchase their own they are available for around $185 from:

South Eastern Communications
Phone: 0449030704
0359720476
Email:sales@secomms.com.au

I'm going with Morphett Vale, they have a bar, function centre and pokies connected to their station. I think it's all part of the same community club facility.

For info it was Fred Kerr who decided that all CFS trucks would be white, this was back when there was mixture of Red, White, Yellow and Green trucks around the state. There was a big debate at the time over Red V White but Kerr did some investigation and found that White was the most visible.

QuoteDamn you guys still talking about Burnside Pumper. It's easy they'll get a Type 2 or what they want, then the rest of the CFS urban fringe brigades that are busier than Burnside will be putting their hands up for one. I can see it now.

Actually I don't think you know anything about the situation at Burnside, they have already stated that a Type 2 is not an option and that they are prepared to put their own dollars in towards a suitable replacement for the Volvo. Other urban fringe brigades are already in line for a Type 2 but not Burnside.

Quote99% of the CFS is country.
(ok the 99% is a guess but 96.5% of all statistics are made up)

Yeah, and 90% of the calls are done by urban brigades.

Only problem I have with the Duty Officer system is that it puts a lot of responsibility on one person. Who acknowledges the page with MFS and handles resource tracking when that one person is on the dunny or is sharing an intimate moment with the other half, are they realistically going to arrange someone else to do the D.O. role everytime they go shopping or do they just bail out of the shopping to handle each fixed alarm at the nursing home.

I also don't like the idea of people outside of the response area acknowledging the page, there have been times when local GRN sites are down however someone acknowledging the page in the city still got it, result was no one locally got the message however they also weren't defaulted.

Why have a system that makes more unnecessary work for volunteers when you've got a bunch of paid staff there to do the same thing, ah thats right it's called micro managing every single incident.

QuoteAdelaide Fire monitoring less talk groups would clean up the Metro GRN towers

Would make no difference, Adelaide Fire use Centracom consoles which have a direct connection into the backbone of the network through the NOCC. Same with SAPOL, SAAS, CFS and SES, as well as a few other agencies that use GRN.

They do have the ability to direct connect to a GRN site should the wide area trunking become unuseable though, in that case only the users on the particular site that the Centracom is connected to would hear the comcen. That is why you see the Yagi antennas on top of the comcens, they are pointed at key GRN sites to still provide some coverage to particular areas on a single talkgroup.

QuoteNow all we need is GRN simplex on the fireground...

Have to disagree with you there chief.

UHF simplex at the lower end of 400mhz is a fickle beast, it doesn't fare well with smoke, wet pine forests or dense fog. We had our fun with it in the early days of GRN and quite frankly it sucked.

VHF for fireground is the way to go, just give us a few more portables and ditch the crappy speaker mikes that come with the Icoms.

QuoteThe minister who might not be the minister for much longer?

Yeah great, then we go back to Patty Conlon, the ex UFU legal counsel and good mate of the MFS.

Not sure what's worse, a minister that has no idea about us and doesn't give a toss or a minister that panders to every request of the MFS and still doesn't give a toss about us   :|

QuoteWhat ever happens there must be something done very quickly because training and organising these crew will take a good chunk of the time left before FDS.

I don't think anyone has ever suggested it will be happening within the next 12 months. There has been no money allocated in the budget for this program and as far as I can tell it is all still a dream in the mind of a couple of people in Waymouth Street.

If it it happens the earliest we would see anyone on the fireground would be late 2008 early 2009.

It's alright, his brigade is already screwed anyway.

QuoteUnsure but if they didn't it was up to them as they (CFS) have to book in with Adelaide fire on 093 dont they? So MFS would have known about the call?

A better way would be to ask Adelaide Fire to respond the appropriate MFS resources as soon you receive page - thereby trying to adhere to the EMA agreement as much as possible (Under that agreement the response must be a Dual, SIMULTANEOUS response by both CFS AND MFS). If a brigade runs a Duty Officer system then this could be their responsibility.

Alternatively do it when you acknowledge the page.

I wouldn't consider advising Adelaide Fire that you are mobile to an alarm the same as asking them to respond to one, also doing it when you are actually going mobile isn't really advising them as quickly as you possibly could because generally at least four minutes would have passed from the time you received the call.

RESPOND TO FIRE ALARM SPRINGBANK PLAZA, CNR WATERLOO CNR RD & KENSINGTON WAY, BURTON *CFSRES:, FIP ALARM *WFAM*, 10/07/2007 02:21:09 CFS Salisbury Response

So does anyone know if MFS went to this job last night ???

I have read that - however it doesn't really state how many trucks you should respond to Fixed Alarms - all it says is that the first truck goes to the panel and the second truck (if applicable) to the booster. What does 'if applicable' mean, does it mean if the brigade feels like responding two trucks, does it mean that only respond a second truck if the premesis has a booster, does it mean if you are in an MFS EMA area respond four appliances.

Hence the fallback to SOP 2.1 which has the Initial Resource Response Schedule. This is the closest thing I can find that discusses with any clarity how many appliances you should respond to an incident.

Well it seems that not everyone is happy about the transition. According to the latest copy of the UFU newsletter if things aren't resolved soon the SES and CFS might be taking back their own CRD in the short term.

Can't see it happening though because they have conveniently left out the fact that 4 ex CFS OCO's will now be joining the comm's team.

http://www.ufusa.asn.au/wordback_5.pdf

QuoteI mean Taplan for example, 5 calls last year, most they have ever done is 16, why on earth do they need a brand new truck,

I agree Pumprescue, this is a disgraceful waste of tax payers money. Considering there are brigades out that do that many calls in day that have not seen a new truck in a number of years it really doesn't seem to make any sense at all.

Taplan may need a replacement vehicle but do you really think it is wise to have a $250,000 vehicle sitting there when a re-furbed one would do just as well - crazy.

QuoteBlackwood 34 now online. All crew please familiarize your self with the appliance. Snr 2

Anyone know which vehicle this is that they have got ??

QuoteDoes it bother you that the MFS also "downgrade" their alarm responses at times too? Quite often during the day you see 1 or 2 appliances going to alarms when there is usually 3 or more. Works both ways.

Not really, MFS SOP's are signed off by the Chief Officer and state that during the day they have a standard response of two appliances to alarms - this is because during the day there is more chance of someone noticing an actual fire and calling in the job - then the response would be increased to a standard structure fire response (which is different to a fixed alarm response anyway). If the MFS Chief Officer is happy with this then good for him, he can always guarantee an appliance will respond from somewhere so I don't have a problem with this.

Unfortunately the CFS don't have any Fixed Alarm response in the SOP's, therefore we must follow the response SOP's relating to structure fires which states that 2 appliances must respond to any 1st alarm or initial response. It also states that at least one of those appliances must be carrying CABA (although states nothing about having to have BA operators) .

I can't see that any brigade can guarantee two appliances 24/7 therefore at least two brigades must be responded to any of those incidents that require a 2 appliance response.

Then again Regions don't seem to give a stuff about brigades not responding appropriately and seem happy to keep the current ad-hoc approach to alarms.

Quote11:50:23 19-06-07 MFS: RESPOND COMMERCIAL FIRE 19/06/07 11:49,GRAND TRUNKWAY -,TORRENS ISLAND, MAP 80 G 2 ,,POWER BOARD ON FIRE,DAILY INC. NO. 30,205 41 251 361 281*CFSRES: MFS Car 41

I thought I remember reading that the Torrens Island Power station actually fell in Salisbury CFS area. No CFS involvement today though apart from Burnside doing a COQ.

If I recall correctly there was a Hazmat job out there a couple of years ago that CFS took care of. Can anyone confirm ??

QuoteCrankster, does it really bother you that much what appliances go to calls in other's areas? Or do you have shares in the shopping centre?

It only bothers me because every day we see an inappropriate response to many calls throughout the state. As Pumprescue said it is not unusual for a captain in his ute to attend to an alarm - reset it and put back a stop before the appliance arrives - yet no one in any Regions question it - even though they are aware of it happening.

I'm not saying that Salisbury would be doing this as I know they are a good brigade, but if you don't have MFS on the initial response then you are certainly not providing the best service to the community in that area.

Yes Darius I am aware that MFS have the Firemon monitoring server in their comcen, however based on the information the response message is displaying on the screen I can't see how they would know they need to initiate an MFS response as well - happy to be corrected though.

What if the person that acknowledges the page is in Adelaide, but there is a localised paging outage in the South East and no one down there receives it. You then have MFS believing the page has been received and no one responding to the station.

Just make it the first person in the station acknowledges the page, then they take ownership of getting the truck out the door or defaulting to another brigade - easy.

QuoteNot sure wether you realised that this was a test page:

Yes I understand it was a test page, it was actually a page to ensure that everything is correct as they cut over from the old Romtek to the new Wireless Fixed Alarm Monitoring (WFAM) Romtek. The page was exactly what the brigade will receive when an alarm is activated.

In this situation it looks as though no MFS appliances will be automatically responded.

Quotearen't mot alarms these days being privately monitored so the alarm company rings MFS who then dispatch the resources?

No.

Some are, in fact it is often cheaper to have a system monitored by a security alarm company, however the rollout of the new WFAM system by the CFS will now mean it's cheaper to have it monitored by CFS rather than a security company or MFS.

QuotePS. crankster for all these preprogrammed responses, the paperwork is signed off by the group, region and SHQ.

Yes I realise that, however it seems obvious that Region must just sign off on the single brigade response arrangements without any thought as to what the SOP's suggest or what is actually appropriate.

Just saw this on the paging site

RESPOND TO FIRE ALARM SPRINGBANK PLAZA, CNR WATERLOO RD & KENSINGTING WAY, BURTON *CFSRES:, FIP ALARM *WFAM*, 18/06/2007 11:23:27

Given that this alarm is located in an CFS / MFS dual response area how are MFS going to be responded ??

Looking at this page you would assume that only Salisbury CFS are going. Maybe Salisbury will get to the station and call MFS and ask for them to respond, but wouldn't it be better to do it automatically.

Maybe on the inital page a note could be added - something like 'SOCC TO RESPOND MFS' that way as soon as the SOCC (or MFS Comms soon) see the response page they can initiate a call to MFS and get the appropriate response going as well.

It is interesting to see what response some brigades have to a fixed alarm, many brigades have the WFAM response only to one brigade. Even though CFS SOP's say that two appliances must be responded, are brigades that only have one brigade on the initial page saying that they can always guarantee two trucks out the door ?? If not then we are not responding a correct response to these incidents.

Again I think we are assuming that all fixed alarms will be nothing and that there is no point bothering another brigade for false alarms. Only problem is that if the place is big enough to have a fixed alarm it is at least going to be a B Class risk, as the response to a structure fire in a B Class risk is four appliances we are immediately going to be disadvantaged should we find a going job. At least get two trucks going initially to an alarm so you have some BA backup.

Companies spend big bucks putting in fire detection and suppression systems, it's a shame some CFS brigades don't take the response to them seriously.