CFS Urbanisation

[Red Truck Wonderland]

I feel that CFS has become to urbanised in its future directions and policies, I would like to hear from other people if they feel the same way or not! especially with many people in state HQ comming from the urban fringe, are they missing the true rural point of view?



My personal Stance:

Give MFS areas such as Morphet Vale, Salisbury, Mt Barker, and turn these Stations into Support Brigades, Like Burnside and Athelstone. Reducing the workload on the Volunteers (More MFS stations mean more jobs for those volunteers who are capable) A similar thing happened in the Para group, TTG CFS gave away Golden Grove and Salisbury gave away the levels, They now do less calls but the calls are more action. correct me if i'm wrong.

Allow those who get paid to do most of the work load and allow the Volunteers to provide that support function. ( I know of stations both rural and Urban fringe who couldn't turn out a truck through the day,  think of your own group,  how many times have third fourth and fith pages been required, (Yes it has happened to MFS Retained stations as well.)


Give a greater focus back to rural brigades who need more support. (Being involved with both SAAS and CFS in a rural enviroment the support from CFS paid staff is Poor in comparison.)

Limit the amount of hours volunteers may donate in a given time frame allowing for family and work time. (I don't know how many devorces i have seen caused by obsession with the cfs pager and call outs) any thoughts on how this can be acheived 

CFS produces a In Service Education Plan like SAAS, that ensures people who have gained skills are maintaining them in accordance with the evolving climate.  Ie, it gives them a year to prove skills during training or emergency incidents. with a focus on a specific area each year. (The time required for continuance training is now ridculas)

Do people in the country also feel that there is basicly two CFS's  a Rural volunteer out of necessity and an urban fringe who are obsessed with high call rates who wish their truck was painted red?

This is not meant to offend rather raise a topic for discussion that i have been hearing down the station more and more of late.

PS, how can you stop station politics?  does it only happen in my station....

RTW




 

[safireservice]

Im not sure if these brigades "gave away" these areas which you speak of. The part about less calls? These brigades are doing more calls now compared to when these areas were theirs, so to speak.

[Hicksflat14]

More MFS stations mean more jobs for those volunteers who are capable

It also means more cost and more duplication of resources.

They now do less calls but the calls are more action. correct me if i'm wrong

I will. There is a heck of a lot of turnouts where they receive stops on route, similarly with all urban brigades that run against the MFS.

Limit the amount of hours volunteers may donate in a given time frame allowing for family and work time

Your joking right? How do you know that those people weren't at the station a lot because they wanted to get away from the troubles at home? Let people live their lives the way they want to (as long as its not illegal). If anything, perhaps the state should limit the amount of time i spend at work so i can be around more for calls during the periods we lack numbers, then perhaps we wouldn't have a problem with brigades defaulting?

The time required for continuance training is now ridculas

Yes it is.


As for the urban issue, the CFS needs to look at systems similar to those in the CFA where there is either a station officer or staff during the day. That is, they just fill in the crew shortage when there is one rather than completely replicating the resources (appliances, stations, bureaucracy, crew) by simply putting in MFS in addition to CFS. But we've been through this before as to why it wont happen.

[Red Truck Wonderland]

According to the statitics of Salisbury their total incidents attended were,
Total Incidents for 2005-06     365 
Total Incidents for 2004-05     421     
and as for TTG they only show 5 stop calls in 05-6 fy. Furthermore both brigades show a dramatic decrease in actual man hours.  (http://www.fire-brigade.asn.au) 
 


And no i'm not joking,,,, i'm not telling you how to live your life but am however suggesting to take into account the risks of such behaviour. There is more to CFS and some volunteers really need to ask themselves the question.  Work during the day, attend fire calls at night work the day back again for more calls, does this sound like you? maybe you're a bigger OH&S risk than you're willing to admit. It doesn't matter weather your volunteering or being paid you are still working.  Does your station, Mr Hicksflat have a policy ensuring a balance, i know ours does. (Sleep Deprivation = a massive risk in a dynamic emergency situation.)

Finally your statement about greater cost and duplication of resouces,  The ESL can only buy so much equipment,  the CFS is in my opinion the best in Australia for Vol Services, both equipment and training, however is in a poor state when recruitment, retention and support of volunteers are concerned.  The current ecomomic climate will only mean things will get worse for the CFS and maybe a devistating fire like Ash wednsday is needed to re awaken both the government and residents to the importance of the CFS. 
 
 

[Pineapple Bus]

This is true The time required to be a CFS volunteer in an urban brigade is increasing exponetialy (lots).  The increase of paid station will allow for a better coverage for some areas and to jobs for the volunteers who have worked so hard to get the qualifications in there own time

[RescueHazmat]

I just query why no one from these "active urban brigades" are on here saying they are being worked too hard, or don't have the time.. - I am yet to read a statement from a person in one of these 'busy' urban brigades saying they have a problem with it..

[safireservice]

I just query why no one from these "active urban brigades" are on here saying they are being worked too hard, or don't have the time.. - I am yet to read a statement from a person in one of these 'busy' urban brigades saying they have a problem with it..

Thats probably because they dont. Just other people in "less busy" brigades assuming they do.

[RescueHazmat]

My point exactly.. 

[CFS_Firey]

I just query why no one from these "active urban brigades" are on here saying they are being worked too hard, or don't have the time.. - I am yet to read a statement from a person in one of these 'busy' urban brigades saying they have a problem with it..

I'm from one of the more busy urban/rural brigades, and while I personally don't have a problem with attending so many calls, I can see that continuing to run with only volunteers isn't sustainable.  

There is no way the CFS can group all brigades together and treat them the same - they need to make the distinction between Urban and Rural brigades, and they need to treat them differently.  While some busy brigades are able to handle the large number of calls, it is irresponsible of the CFS/Government/Community not to honour that commitment with better equipment, training, funding, or other such support.  

Of course once you try to make that distinction you create even more inter-brigade rivalry, and probably a greater hunger for some brigades to boost their call numbers for special treatment.

[pumprescue]

I come from a "busy' brigade, but at the lower end of the busy scale, I think we can handle the call rate, but these brigades doing 400 pluss calls a year really need to be looked at, some are nudging 500 calls a year, that isn't sustainable for a total volunteer force without some sort of help, as we all know, even though you can recruit til the cows come home, its still the same core group of vols attending the calls, what sort of lifestyle does that afford, they might think thats cool whilst they are young and might not have a family, eventually the novelty will wear off.

The issue we will have in this state is ever getting a CFA model off the ground. In a lot of these area you would be better off reducing these brigades to a support role like has been suggested, with perhaps a focus on supporting other CFS, as these urban areas have a larger recruitment base. How often do we hear these brigades being the 5th wheel at jobs, not really needed, often stopped, or released straight away.

The CFS certainly needs to look into the situation, the sure as hell aren't giving the busy brigades support, cutting the money seems to be the flavour of the month. Kudos to the guys for doing it, but it can't last without some sort of input and help from HQ.

[mattb]

As an Officer of a brigade that responded to over 460 calls last year I think I can provide some input into the discussion.

For my brigade it is not the firecalls that we have a problem with, we responded to 461 incidents last year and defaulted maybe 8 times, we maintained an average response time of 4mins 12 secs and an average arrival time of 10mins 49secs, therefore putting us in the top couple of percent for stats in the CFS and within the AFAC standard for a volunteer urban brigade.

Yes we do get plenty of stop calls and crappy jobs like fixed alarms but that comes with the territory of being in the middle of two other busy CFS brigades and on the boundary with MFS. At our recruit information nights that we hold before every intake we advise the potential recruits that we get plenty of stop calls and don't see fire at every job we go to, we show them our stats and explain that getting up at 3am for a fixed alarm is part of the job, we make sure there are no surprises when they join the brigade and become operational.

We are busy and we are taking volunteers away from their families a lot, quite a few of our guys are doing over 200 calls a year but we are not forcing them to do so. As long as they meet the brigade membership requirements of 15% for fire calls and 50% of trainings we are happy. They are attending incidents because they want to, in many cases it is a good opportunity to catch up with everyone else and have a coffee after the job and a chat, it may be a social experience but we don't mind as it's getting people down to the station and getting our trucks out the door.

We have identified fatigue amongst the members as an issue and are putting some actions into place to try and manage that. We have just begun our recruit squad for this year which consists of 11 new members, this is our biggest intake we have done and has required us to lift our SFEC prescription for members to 50.

We also try and keep morale high by putting on food and drinks at least once a month after training nights as well as holding family days at the station a couple of times a year so that the families can feel part of the brigade as well. We are also looking at making some modifications to our station to make life more comfortable for guys that enjoy spending time there, if they are going to be there we might as well do what we can to make it comfortable.

So the brigade has identified the issues and are working towards solutions, we don't want to find ourselves responding to over 500 calls when SACAD comes in but having no one left to go to them.

If there was anything that CFS could do to assist us it would be to provide someone to do the administration work for us. Something similar to the CFA Brigade Administration Support Officer (BASO) program. The BASO has an office at the station and does all the admin type stuff that currently the volunteers are doing, things like organising PR events, dealing with external agencies, ordering, finance, all those things that our members are doing that really could be done by a paid person.

In the CFA the BASO is often shared between a couple of brigades so in our case you could have one person working between Morphett Vale, Happy Valley and Seaford, during the day they often respond to jobs as well so it gives you another firefighter to get the truck going. If we had that here we would be very happy, currently you we have some of the more experienced and active firefighters in the brigade also putting a lot of time into the other roles as well (finance, admin, equipment / ordering) if we could give those tasks to a paid staff person that would mean we could focus wholly on responding to incidents.

Why CFS haven't looked at this before I do not know, it has been working well in the CFA for at least 10 years. Yes it will cost a few dollars to employ maybe 10 staff to do it throughout Region One and Two, but it is really a cheap investment into securing the future of some of these busy brigades and groups and reducing fatigue and burnout of some of our volunteers.

Enough ranting from me, but happy to discuss it further with anyone.

Regards

Matt Bonser
Lieutenant
Morphett Vale CFS
www.mvcfs.asn.au

[rescue5271]

So a part from MATT,how many other members who are talking about this topic come from URBAN brigade's?? Have the busy urban CFS brigade's been saying that they can't handly the call rate's that they have??? Are you aware that the busy brigade's get along with there call outs because they have members who do shift work or the have members who do work for the dole??? This state or any other state for that matter could not afford a red paid fire truck at each location that is being looked at..... I agree may be CFS should look at the CFA system with paid staff who are backed up by volunteers during the day and full volunteer crews at nite. For the record CFA run and in full support of the UFU stations with day crews only of 3 members who are backed up by volunteers. Works else where so why/cant it work here???

[uniden]

It cant work, funding...Victoria is completely different too. Only one fire service in country/rural areas including the urban interface..

[RescueHazmat]

So a part from MATT,how many other members who are talking about this topic come from URBAN brigade's?? Have the busy urban CFS brigade's been saying that they can't handly the call rate's that they have??? Are you aware that the busy brigade's get along with there call outs because they have members who do shift work or the have members who do work for the dole??? This state or any other state for that matter could not afford a red paid fire truck at each location that is being looked at..... I agree may be CFS should look at the CFA system with paid staff who are backed up by volunteers during the day and full volunteer crews at nite. For the record CFA run and in full support of the UFU stations with day crews only of 3 members who are backed up by volunteers. Works else where so why/cant it work here???

Im from a busy, urban brigade, and I have no problems. - I'm not a diehard, my stats might only sit around the 75 / 80% mark for attendance to calls for the year instead of those sitting in the mid to high 90%, but hey, I also have a life outside of CFS..

[David]

Mattb you raise some good points regarding the extra work load of volunteers.  I recently transfered brigades. At my old brigade almost the entire workload was done by active members.  In the brigade I have joined now alot of the non operational roles eg Admin and Finance are carried out by Auxillary members.  As I understand it this is not a requirement of the brigade, any registered member can stand for these positions, but it does allow the active members to shed the work load alittle.  Also as these positions are filled by active members family it encourages good relations and understanding of what we do.

[pumprescue]

Your right AMtt, the burnout needs looking at, 1 staff member to look after a group would help no end, we want to fight fires, not push papers....

[canman]

Sorry guys, too busy to chat......another firecall.

 

KC

[rescue5271]

I guess we could always get the VSO to take on more work at brigade level or a group level....The baso system would and could work as long as people dont expect them to do it all,as a ex CFA volunteer it works well and those brigades and groups that have a BASO have all said that they are no free to do the job that a firefighter should do....Bring on the baso may be have a few for a start and see how that goes put them into the busy brigade's in region one.... You will never know unless you give it ago.....

[Kenny]

come visit salisbury cfs and see our call our rates, our man hours at jobs and why people are at the cfs.

Then revise your initial post.