SA Firefighter

P1 is lights and sirens -threat to life
P2 is as quick as possible under standard road rules - no lights / siren - imminent threat to property etc
P3 is less urgent

As far as i know all the comm centre operators are paid MFS staff, however quite a few of them have background from other services

don't know about changing the jobs although it certainly seems like they can at times, for example we recently started getting P2 general rescue jobs when they all used to be P1

Depends the issue we have in our area is getting stops when jobs are still going,

I have been in the truck on the way to a job, received a stop call for it. Since we were 5 mins away from it we kept going, once we got there we found the job was still underway and that another fire appliance rocked up lights and sirens blazing 10 minutes after we did to provide a tool we carry on our truck.

It really depends on who is on shift, in our area some are great others aren't same with the com centre,

Don't know where abouts you are but i would say it depends on the unit. In most cases where we are it is around 20 mins from page to on scene depending on where it is in the area and the priority of the call which remember is built up with for more traffic and traffic lights to and from the unit.

what annoys me is when i can get from home or work to the unit, get a truck to the scene and still would have had the job done before the the on scene service (i'm not trying to have a go at all firies, some are very good but others really need some practice in the basics), and the casualty wouldn't have been bounced around nearly so much or nearly slid sideways off the ladder.

Its funny that you get a tree down over road it will get handed over as soon as we rock up as they need to get back to cover their patch. However make that remove a window or something to get someone out of a second story they will be trying to stay as long as possible even if another service can do it is on scene with the tools to do it while they are waiting for a truck that is 15 mins away, or while waiting for that truck they'll put a stop on the SES truck that is already mobile and closer to the job.

what I'm trying to get at is that if you want metro people to keep volunteering (as the can't join the CFS / SAAS in most cases and how many roof jobs can you do) you can't keep wasting their time with stops and sending fire services P1 and SES P2 all the time, and stopping jobs where they aren't finished and the vollies can still contribute to the outcome. People get the sick of it don't respond and then when you want them for example when that wingfield fire was one we had a rescue of someone on torrens where stokes was needed and not a fire truck to be seen you may not have them.

And why shouldn't they be responded to all rescue jobs?  Most SES trucks are better equipped the CFS / MFS units for the rescue jobs especially if it was for example a larger vertical job or someone trapped under a fallen tree, trapped in an packing machine or something. Often the Volunteers are better trained for it too, I've watched other services do a reverse ladder slide that took the better part of an hour to complete to move someone 7 meters up a slope. where it should have taken 20 minutes tops

The issue is that SACAD puts all jobs like kids in car into that field, and depending on what the operator puts it in as depends on if they get responded at all.

For example

Assist SAAS - get someone off a tower crane or out of a 10th story window - SES will not be responded because we don't do the "ASSIST SAAS" wording but are likely better equipped and trained to do the job as that is what all the basic training is aimed at.

but

Rescue General - get someone off a tower crane or out of a 10th story window - SES will be responded -  same job but different wording which in in our response criteria.

Jobs like that should have their own category which would save a pile of issues as it doesn't take a genius to get into a car

there would only be about 5 or 6 divisional officer roles up for grabs as some staff that were already employed have moving into those roles and there is only 1 district officer per district. so 10 in total i think

Personally as a team leader the safety of my crew comes first, if they aren't trained to enter the water and they are going to put themselves at risk or being another casualty by trying to enter the water they the person on the car will wait - no point in losing them and the rescuer, we will set catch lines down stream but i would not risk my crew to rescue someone who has tried to cross a fast running stream like that. Any team leader that does risk their crew should be chucked off the trucks straight away - we have enough risks in what we do without taking any more.

that being said most units now have the capability for working form the banks of a river etc. and many units carry boat hooks etc which gives you another 5 - 6m of reach. More in water training should be happening but the cost and maintenance of the skills will always be an issue for volunteers. Also there are many units that need it so the capability will take a while to develop
 

OR someone broke something pretty good

Depends on the reason for the page someone could have paged in after the truck had left which isn't unusual.

Metro units have 10 mins to be mobile for p1 tasks.

Sometimes that can cause issues as some units have poor Access and a bad light change or heavy traffic  can make you miss the time.  I'm not sure about other units but my unit generally has the first truck out the door in 5 to 8 minutes. Most cfs unit I seen seen't surrounded by traffic lights and main roads.

SES money to throw around? you must be thinking of another service, we get far far less than the CFS does.

never had the problem of not getting through to adelaide fire, had plenty of problems getting put on hold at link paging. couple of times i;ve had to use the web site to drop crew pages

 i work more than the standard mfs roster and worse hours and i still find time to volunteer around family commitments so lack of time for me doesn;t really cut it. I have no problems if they commit to hang around after even if they say on one of my days off i'll be availiabe for days and commit to it which we'vehad a couple do that and no probs its great to have a guarnteed person on hand that is usually a reasonably experinced member, i just don't think we should waste training resources when we are stuggling for places on some courses anyway and most of our unit training is organised by volunteers. Normally it takes more than 6 months to get a usefull crew member sure you can get basic first aid and tools done but to get them to understand the capabilites of the equipment and what you can do with and get some jobs under their belt takes longer normally 12 to 18.

As for gettting that experince elsewhere not really our problem, if they want that experince there are courses you can pay for to get that sort of thing and then  work the shutdowns in the mines or industry during leave if you are desperate or committed to entry. - before you ask yes i have been and done this a couple of times and its a great experince.

personally if i find out a new member or someone who is wanting to join is planning on using the ses for a stepping stone for sapol firies or army i don't really like accepting them they may be dedicated for 6 - 12 months by which time they are just about getting useful. Then we lose them and we've wasted 6months of volunteers time training them and the effort could have been devoted to other members.

we used to have alot of people join as for 6mths to get into sapol then vanish so now we don't take them and we are only taking people are there for their commmunity and generally they are staying 3 or 4 years which is far better for us

could easily have been a problem safecom my ses unit had trouble getting our power bill paid through the share services lot kept on sending bills to region and got told it had been paid then next month another bill would rock up so doesn't really surprise me much that this has happened

depending on conditions generally at my unit we can rope it down, and not have to get near to it or on it as we have a sling shot and throw lines to set ropes with. and could set picket holdfasts for anchors if needed.

members of our unit have to maintain 75% attendance at training or prove they are still maintaining skills. IF they don't they have 3 months to improve and we also put them through a skills test if they fail they are taken off operational crew until they meet the basic skills, ropes knots, lashings, hand tools etc.

was a good weekend its a very different experince from working on the trucks doing storm jobs an building impacts, definatly relies on the team leader to be on the ball.

should be a good weekend, we've got 1 team in and a few members playing casualty

how many of those 800 would they take to pat 1?

well aware of that i'm just holding off the application for as long as possible to see if i can manage it if not theres not a great deal of point putting it in.

thinking about it, at the moment i'm just geting over a knee injury so it makes the fitness for the beep test a bit hard

but surely it should be based on response capability, so if someone changes jobs and can't respond during the day you can get someone else trained

any idea hw long it is between applications closing and the start of the testing?

no what i mean is that if you need to do a practical part somewhere away from where you are stationed, do you do it during shift time or is it done on days off

Is all that training expected to be done after work hours or do you get to do some of it on shift time?