my personal thoughts only:
i think that we will see a lot of changes to paid/retained/vollie stations in the coming 10 years or so...
i think most urban fringe areqas will soon become paid or retained stations and most (if not all of us will get the boot), until we can come back and apply with all qaulifications asked for by SAMFS for retainees or whatever organisation ends up running it.
im guessing everyone realises that if areas covered by CFS become MFS retained stations that theyre not going to let us just stay and keep playing... anyone that wishes to remain a fire fighter will have to pass medicals, physicals and aptitude tests... and i dont mean to be rude but i dont think a lot of ppl in the cfs would pass all of these with ease.
but going back to station status/organisation title chantge in urban areas... take the sturt group area for example. i can imagine that as a minimum, blackwood, belair and ededn hills stations will all be closed (or shutdown for all urban work and possibly only asked to backup SAMFS on big incidents) and a single MFS appliance and station put in blackwood area somewhere (swapping 7 trucks for 1)
(still just regarding this one fringe of the city)
or maybe they'll shut down all of sturt group and all of mawson and just place a MFS station in blackwood and another in happy valley somewhere, then in comparison to current MFS response areas, they will still have an adequate element of fire cover
this isnt very far fetched at all when you think about it, because from what ive heard MFS have already tried to shutdown sturt group CFS before and place a station in blackwood but local council prevented them from doing so.
just food for thought anyway... but keep in mind, if we do become retained, they wont keep us all.