2
« on: June 09, 2005, 05:26:46 PM »
How often are response times released to the media or general public by any of the emergency services in SA?
From my knowledge - hardly ever.
National standards exist as a benchmark and all brigades strive to meet/beat them and do a great job as they did on this occasion.
It'd be a shame to see this turn into tit for tat but having dealt with the media, they are often vague in their questioning. I have it on pretty good authority that the journo actually didn’t ask for specific response times.
The journo just mentioned that there was some talk by the residents about how long it took and asked whether it took brigades longer than normal to get there.
The journo was told that response times couldn’t be confirmed off hand but that there was no issue with the length of time taken for crews to arrive. From what I’ve been told the journo certainly didn’t ask for a call back for times to be clarified.
The media are pretty good at only taking the snippets they want to build a story.
Also interestingly, heard that the Advertiser turned up late. Couldn’t get any decent images of the house on fire and the only image they could get was of the person upset - Makes for a pretty good sensationalised story.
But at the end of the day - the journo was just doing his job, as a cadet it seems