SA Firefighter

Our Group get our cylinders through BOC at Lonsdale.

At the recent SFEC update sessions we made sure all our 02 therapy kits in the Group were also now listed as prescribed equipment.

You probably don't need a TIC to see where the hot bits are, but it looked pretty good on the Drager UCF-9000.

Well Region are putting together the purchase order on behalf of the Brigades and Groups, so I guess that means they approve.

We are playing around with the Drager UCF-9000 at the moment, this is the on that the CFA and MFB just replaced all their TIC's with. Any brigades in S.A. using one ?

Surprised no one has mentioned anything about the cheap TIC's on offer from PacFire at the moment.

I think a number of brigades and groups in Region One are grabbing them. There are Argus and the new Flir - K series available.

Prices are very good.

I believe our Group has four on order, should be here in the next couple of weeks I think.

They run on the Telstra Next G network.

I thought there was only ever three causes of fires starting - Men, Women and Children....

And why is CAD looking for 3 appliances to a RCR?  I noticed the same thing with another Para group brigade as well.

Just curious as most other RCR responses seem to follow Sop 2.1 on the initial dispatch and just send a fire and a rescue resource.

Our example was a grass fire where we needed one more appliance. We called AF on the phone and asked them to respond one more Heavy Tanker, operator said no you can't have one, you have to have a full second alarm (two trucks + BWC). We said no - we don't need all that just one truck.

After some discussion the operator still wouldn't send one truck, so we spoke with the Comm's Officer, who said he would help us out and just turn out one truck this time, but he had to call it a 'specialist resource' to do it.

Not exactly a speedy and efficient system if you want one extra vehicle.

In future we will just push the button on our Alpha decoder to turn ou the next appliance - at least we know we can get the page sent immediately without having to jump through hoops.

I heard an MFS officer have a similar argument on 150 one night. He asked for one truck and got told no, you will get a second alarm. The argument went on for a bit until he said ok - you send the second alarm, now put a stop on all the other trucks and just keep one appliance coming.

We were told that you can now name the appliances you wish to be responded again, instead of making everything a second alarm when you only want one extra appliance.

Has this info made it's way to the AF operators PR ?

QuoteOr were the bans downgraded to not scare the Tour Down Under visitors???

Just very lucky really that the BOM got it a bit wrong. If they had of forecast the Catastrophic FDI's in any of the Region 2 districts I think they would have had to cancel that stage of the race.

Pretty standard sort of change day really, hot and windy with a few bans. The change is fairly shallow and slow moving so the FDI's might get up a bit higher than predicted.

I see that Cape Willoughby on KI is currently sitting at an GFDI of 167 though (at 0930), the BOM only had it forecast to reach 48.

This guy went quiet for about 12 months, obviously he is back now in a different vehicle.

We know who he is and where he lives and SAPOL are well aware of him as well.

Given the frequency at which he used to self respond to our incidents previously it will be interesting to see if he starts turning up again.

Yes he is a menace, and a wannabee but lets leave it to the correct people to deal with.

The big advantage of GRN for an organisation like St John is always going to be coverage.

If you go with a commercial provider for paging you will still need an alternative for your country units where commercial paging doesn't exist. No doubt they could provide an SMS solution, but that still relies on phone coverage. This is where the GRN network is superior to any of the others, of course you have to pay for it though.

Do St John come under the Health Department portfolio ? If so then surely there is a deal to be done with one of the other SA Health departments to tack onto their deal.

The other advantage with the GRN is that if you have dual members in the SES or CFS (as I'm sure you would in some of the country regions) they could get a pager programmed with the St John capcodes and the CFS or SES ones (you probably just have to speak nicely to the right people).

QuoteEden Hills Used to carry Heavy Rescue Equip, and when State took it away, they had/have Rapid Intervention Combi Tool. 

Sorry I forgot that they did carry the full kit many years ago. Do they still have the RIV kit or has it gone now ?

I believe Blackwood did respond to this job, so why were Eden turned out at all ??

They aren't rescue, and never have been so why would Blackwood be defaulting to them for rescue. Aren't Christies MFS the rescue resource to that area anyway.

Probably not the biggest issue for the day, but stuff that will need to be sorted out.

This one was probably more likely to attract their attention;

MFS: *CFSRES INC0049 03/12/11 14:07 RESPOND GRASS FIRE, MAIN RD MARRABEL,MAP:C/236 54,TG 097, == 5KM SOUTH OF KAPUNDA == 5KM SOUTH OF MARABLE :EDNH14 KAPD34 : - CFS Eden Hills Response

Not often you will see Eden and Kapunda on the same page.

Or Kapunda and Whyalla;

MFS: *CFSRES INC0078 03/12/11 18:30 RESPOND VEHICLE FIRE INC LPG, EIGHT MILE CREEK RD NO SUBURB,MAP:C/361 53,TG 068, :KAPD34 WHY528 : - CFS Kapunda Response

I'm sure it is all just teething problems, a couple of big jobs today was always going to test the system.

Go live is planned for midnight tonight (Tuesday morning), should take about 3 or 4 hours.

I heard that the default times were six minutes for pager acknowledgement, and then ten minutes after the pager acknowledgement to get the truck on the road. So you have up to sixteen minutes to respond, and then the alerts is called.

That is if you use the full six minutes to acknowledge, i.e. if the Captain or a Group Duty Officer acknowledges the page straight away, then that starts the mobile timer and you then have ten minutes to get on the road, this applies for both appliances in the same station if you have two trucks on the same pager message. So some brigades might be getting defaulted after ten minutes, others after sixteen, it depends on how your brigade or group does the pager acknowledge.

So I think you're right PR, there will be a number of defaults for the second appliance from one station, which means brigades from further away getting a run.

I also heard that the actual cut-over will take place Monday night.

So with just a couple of days to go until they flick the big switch what is your thoughts. Hopefully by now most people should have read the briefing or attended an Ops Update where the changes were explained.

Personally I can see my own brigade becoming busier, looking at the response data and where we will be going it seems that the EMA boundaries have now been widened.

There is also some fairly interesting backup beat data that brings in appliances from 20km's away whilst trucks 5km's away are ignored, but all that stuff can be sorted out after we go live so I am not overly concerned.

We could also see an increase in default calls as the CAD picks the second appliance from a station, but it cannot be crewed, resulting in the next nearest tanker being paged. That could be fun during the FDS when we start to get a few large rural jobs and appliances being defaulted all over the place.

I think overall it will be a good thing and I am looking forward to it. Does anyone know what time it will kick off ? I know SAAS went live at 0300.

It could be an issue if a standard format isn't followed, as I believe nearly all metro MFS stations are now using the TIM system for station turnout.

TIM won't like randomly formatted messages, it will probably still work but may not give a correct voice over or map print out. I guess they would have found out the other night though if it didn't work.

I hear that there was another issue yesterday with the SAAS CAD.

Apparently a nineteen minute delay in the response to an MVA with reported persons trapped at Aldinga.

QuoteIS SACAD PROGRAMMED SO THAT IF RCR OR VEHICLE ACCIDENT IS IN A PAGE IT AUTOMATICALLY GOES TO ADELAIDE UNI ROAD ACCIDENT RESEARCH??

20-10-11 11:33:38 Repage:LYNBOBH 34 P RESPONDING TO VEHICLE ACCIDENTS. LEVILLE 0417 245 128 - Adelaide Uni Road Accident Research
20-10-11 11:33:36 Repage:LYNBOBH 34 P RESPONDING TO VEHICLE ACCIDENTS. LEVILLE 0417 245 128 - Adelaide Uni Road Accident Research
20-10-11 11:33:32 LYNBOBH 34 P RESPONDING TO VEHICLE ACCIDENTS. LEVILLE 0417 245 128 - CFS Barossa Group Officers Response
20-10-11 11:33:32 LYNBOBH 34 P RESPONDING TO VEHICLE ACCIDENTS. LEVILLE 0417 245 128 - CFS Lyndoch Response

It's SAAS that have setup the repage to the ARU guys. There is some difficulties in getting every MVA sent from CAD to then re-page, so they are now using a variety of key words. You will notice that RCR also sends anything with the word aircraft to them as well.

We use Fleurieu Embroidary at Lonsdale for all of our shirts / jumpers etc, never had any problems with them.

Just remember you are not allowed to use the CFS Insignia on anything anymore without the approval of the Chief Officer. I believe one brigade in Region One got a spanking for this, everyone else then received a fairly sternly worded memo about it.

The call in system will be part of the standard TIM software, so no extra expense for those brigades that are using TIM. It will be included in the latest update of the software, due to be released in the next couple of weeks (pre SACAD cutover)

I believe it works by having your pc connected to a modem and phone line. You use your mobile to dial the line and let it ring once then hang up straight away, this checks the user database and confirms it is a valid members telephone number. It then logs you as having called in and displays your name on the screen.

Obviously for this to work you need to have caller ID activated on your mobile.

If you have a look at page 2 of this thread you will see a screen shot of it in operation.

It's not as fancy as the US version but it still performs the fundamental functions of it.

No, I believe all upgrades are free.

For info of the brigades using TIM, a new SACAD compatible version is soon to be released (once they lock down the pager message format). It will also feature the member call in function.