Author Topic: What the SES does  (Read 36659 times)

Offline Chatty

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #50 on: September 23, 2005, 09:42:17 AM »
Ok, let’s establish some basics here:

1 – SES and CFS are here for the one purpose – to serve our communities and provide them with the best damn emergency service we can

2 – CFS is primarily a fire-fighting organisation – sure they do some RCR and other things, but the name says it all – Country FIRE Service

3 – SES is primarily a rescue organisation – and we do a lot of other things, as the name says - State EMERGENCY Service

As far as the counting of incidents goes – I cannot remember ever attending multiple incidents in the one street, except for a couple of occasions where one tree has nuked two houses – that counts as one job.  So, our incidents are invariably all over the place, and when major storms hit the Adelaide Hills it is not unusual for our vehicles to rack up 500km each over a period of two or so days.  Each job counts as one incident in those circumstances.

Where one tasking extends over more than 24 hours, each day is written up as a separate incident, as that accurately represents the change-of-shift which with CFS would be accomplished by calling in another brigade.

Using the above criteria, Adelaide Hills SES attended 205 incidents last financial year, for a total of 4080 man hours and 13,857 km travelled.
A break-up of the incidents gives the following stats:

Animal Rescue          3 occasions
Storm Damage         151 occasions
     Wind                 98 occasions
     Flooding                 53 occasions
Powerlines         12 occasions
Community Service     40 occasions
Public relations      15 occasions
Communications         3 occasions
Evacuations            4 occasions
Fire Support         22 occasions
Hazards present         65 occasions
   
Traffic Control         29 occasions
Emergency Ops Centre  16 occasions
Transport         19 occasions
Vehicle Entry          1 occasions

And yes, I know that when you add them up, it adds up to more than 205 – that’s because some jobs have multiple components…
These 205 jobs were managed with two vehicles – a “light rescue” Ford Courier 4WD and a “medium rescue” Mitsubishi Canter 2WD, both of which are well and truly past their use-by date!

We have over the last 12 months also provided base camp support to CFS at both the Eyre Peninsula and Kangaroo Island fires – a role we are both happy and proud to undertake.

Adelaide Hills SES covers an area of around 1,000 square kilometres, ranging from Callington in the east, Meadows in the south, Harrogate / Woodside / Basket Range / Piccadilly / Summertown in the north and Mylor / Aldgate / Stirling / Crafers / Bridgewater to the west.
And for the record, Adelaide Hills SES is the only non-metropolitan SES Unit that does not have a road crash capability.  In fact, we don’t even have any powered hydraulic gear – only a very ancient set of hand-pumped gear.

Much has been said of our response times.  For the record, in the last 24 months there have been TWO occasions where the Unit took longer than 10 minutes to respond to an incident page, and neither job was a life-threat situation.  Our typical “out-the-door” response time for a life-threat incident is less than 5 minutes and less 10 minutes for storm damage and the like.  Because of our area of coverage we have to travel long distances to some jobs (especially those on our boundaries) and that adds to the time it takes us to actually get to a job.

Added to this is that, until recently, CFS responded to virtually everything “lights and sirens” - SES very rarely did.  We now have new guidelines that enable us to respond to more things as Priority 1 or 2.

What particularly irks me is that on a couple of occasions we have been accused of taking an hour or more to respond to a request from CFS for assistance.  I am more than willing to share our records with anyone, and what they will show is that on those jobs the CFS person responsible (no name, no pack drill) for calling us has waited an hour or more to actually place the call, and then gone back to their CFS members and said “Oh, I called SES an hour ago, I don’t know where they have got to…”

Play safe people

Chatty
SES - nature's worst brings out the best in us

Offline TillerMan

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #51 on: September 23, 2005, 10:50:11 AM »
I think you guy's do a great job in time's of bad weather. Our brigade usually does 4 to 10 jobs at once in bad weather and they are usually pretty minor then we go home but we hear you guy's out there for day's after us.

I am surprised you don't hand ball more job's to us to take the pressure off a bit........ I don't know about the other guy's on here but I wouldn't mind if we cut up a few more tree's on bad night's seeing as we are usually at our station's or out at jobs anyway.

I notice you put public relations down as a job, normally for us that would be on an "other activity" form otherwise we would all do 500 jobs a year.

Offline Chatty

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #52 on: September 23, 2005, 11:03:19 AM »
When we say "public relations" and "community service" we are talking about things like the Christmas Pageant (6+ hours), the Royal Show (this year 5 days of 14 hours each for our Unit) and other time-consuming efforts - I don't have a problem as racking them up as jobs, and our reporting system specifically requires that we do.

As for calling you guys in to help - that has been a problem in the Hills due to the traditionally poor relationship between CFS and SES.  A couple of us (from each service) have been working on solving that problem and I think you'll notice more inter-service cooperation happening in the future.
But we also start getting into issues of equipment levels and training - we are much better prepared than the average CFS Brigade to deal with storm and rescue jobs.  For trees alone we have 7 chainsaws and 2 pole saws...

And I have to say I feel guilty about calling CFS in on wet nights when you don't have wet weather gear and we do

Chatty
SES - nature's worst brings out the best in us

rescue5271

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #53 on: September 23, 2005, 01:46:55 PM »
yes SES do a great job, i was able to see this first hand while offering help the other day at a nasty mva just out of dartmoor. I think sometimes we never fully understand what ses or cfs or mfs really do unless you see them at work first hand. I  have no problem if they want to hand ball some work to cfs when they are busy as long as we have trainned people to use chainsaws...

Offline TillerMan

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #54 on: September 23, 2005, 02:18:15 PM »
Maybe more training officers need to organise more inter service training so that we can compare equipment and get used to some of the SES members and controllers so that we're not scared to call each other out.
It goes both ways, SES wouldn't realize half of the gear a fire truck has to carry and we wouldn't realize half of the gear an SES rescue truck carry's.

Offline oz fire

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #55 on: September 23, 2005, 04:29:08 PM »
Chatty - good post.

I guess when you feel that someone has had a go at you relax - you are from one SES unit and there are a few and many don't have the repsonse times that you have - but hey all services are in the same boat, there are CFS, MFS and SAAS stations that can't always meet their  'nominated' response times!

As for passing off jobs - wet weather gear is a poor excuse - we are a fire service, we use water every day and we are used to getting wet!!!
At the end of the day it must always come back to service to the community - why delay a response to someones request just because you need to use another service!

As for the only non metropolitan unit not to have RCR - there are many that are have it, that are second recuse and hence rarely if ever use it, so don't feel left out!
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the ability to control it.

Offline CFS_Firey

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #56 on: September 23, 2005, 05:31:29 PM »
Thanks for your post Chatty... Its always good to hear what you really do from someone who does it... As oz fire said, I don't think anyone was having a go at the SES, we all appreciate what you do...

2 – CFS is primarily a fire-fighting organisation – sure they do some RCR and other things, but the name says it all – Country FIRE Service

I think this is one of the major problems the CFS is facing... Yes, most of the brigades (especially rural) only do fire, but there are a large number that are also rescue and HAZMAT. Most of the Adelaide hills have a rescue brigade in close proximity, and CFS rescue isn't just an omnitool, and bolt cutters, but a professional service (At least thats what we like to think :lol:). Most brigades in Lofty Group are responding to as many MVA's as we are to going rural fires... But the public still see us as a fire service, rather than what we really do...
Also, the MFS (Metro FIRE Service) do far more than just fires... If we just responded to fires, then we could ask why the SES is responding to a tree down with no threat to life, its not an Emergency... :wink:

What particularly irks me is that on a couple of occasions we have been accused of taking an hour or more to respond to a request from CFS for assistance. I am more than willing to share our records with anyone, and what they will show is that on those jobs the CFS person responsible (no name, no pack drill) for calling us has waited an hour or more to actually place the call, and then gone back to their CFS members and said “Oh, I called SES an hour ago, I don’t know where they have got to…”

I suspect these incidents occur when you are already at a job, and we were placed in a queue... This happens a lot with SAPOL, if they already have another incident more important than yours, you can call all you like, but they won't come any faster...

Offline Benji

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #57 on: September 23, 2005, 07:58:51 PM »
I suspect these incidents occur when you are already at a job, and we were placed in a queue... This happens a lot with SAPOL, if they already have another incident more important than yours, you can call all you like, but they won't come any faster...

Not always. I can think of one job we had, I heard the CFS brigade ask for us to attend over a scanner while I was just leaving the city. We received the page for the job just as I entered Mt Barker so about 30 min delay. We had no other tasks that day, and from memory there wasnt any other CFS brigades talking on the GRN for that period so I assume it was a quite day for all.

Some days things just get lost in communication I guess..
Ben(B2)
Crossdressing SES & CFS member

Offline kat

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #58 on: September 28, 2005, 07:49:04 PM »
Ah, no such thing as "some RCR".

We do RCR :-)

Good to read your informative, "chatty" post. Thanks. And that's one small SES member in your avatar ;-)
There's a difference between genius and stupidity -- genius has it's limits.

strikeathird

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #59 on: September 29, 2005, 12:28:52 AM »
Chatty - I disagree with the comment about being primarily the ' Country FIRE Service.  Either you are mis-informed of really have little knowledge in that area.  And the comment about a little rescue.. Thats bollocks!  - I think if it was all TOTALLED up, across the state, CFS would attend and operate at more RCR jobs that SES.

Secondly, we could go on all day about times when SES could have called CFS, and visa versa...Instead lets think about ways it can be fixed... 
(Eg, when i heard the SES the other day arriving at an incident, giving it a priority, and moving to the next.. Should they have called the CFS to attend it?? Should SOC have jumped in and said "you are in CFS area, how about while you go to the next one to give it a priority, they handle that..??)

Who knows... So many posibilities of what could / should / would be done...  Lets try fixing them!

Offline Mike

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #60 on: October 04, 2005, 12:07:45 PM »
CFS and SES cover the SAME areas Striker... so the only argument about those imaginary boundaries would be with other SES units in Chatty's case.

Lets not waste time on who goes to more of what..... if your that interested... ask for the numbers! the info is available.

Offline Benji

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #61 on: October 06, 2005, 10:30:08 AM »
Ah, no such thing as "some RCR".

We do RCR :-)

What was meant Kat was that while CFS do RCR in some parts of the state, SES do it in other parts. I had a quick look but I couldn't find the total number of RCR jobs the CFS attended last financial year, but the SES had 720 RCR jobs.

State wide our top 3 jobs are Wind/Storm (1763 jobs), Flooding (944) and RCR (720). SES also assisted CFS in Fire Ops 161 times.
Ben(B2)
Crossdressing SES & CFS member

Offline kat

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #62 on: October 06, 2005, 11:14:25 AM »
The CFS attended 1686 motor vehicle accident incidents in  2002/2003 from the annual report (sorry not to be more recent but the 03/04 link from the CFS web page resulted in the .pdf version of the 02/03 report which took so long to come up that I didn't have the heart to try the 02/03 link and see if it yielded the 03/04 report)

This is incidents, not Brigade turnouts.

The total of incidents attended for 02/03 was given as 8079 with 13518 brigade responses.

I guess like us the 720 RCR jobs you've quoted included any motor vehicle accident whether actual extrication involving rescue equipment was needed. From our 1686 MVA incidents attended in 02/03, 191 were listed as "rescue".
There's a difference between genius and stupidity -- genius has it's limits.

Wagon 1

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #63 on: October 06, 2005, 01:26:44 PM »
Oh yeah there is no way that 720 jobs were cuts outs otherwise we would be one of the worst places in the world to drive a car!!

Offline Benji

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #64 on: October 06, 2005, 04:59:34 PM »
I couldn't tell you how many of those 720 were 'cut outs' our annual incident sheet just lists it as Road Accident Rescue.

But the point is still the same, the fire service (MFS/CFS) is not the only RCR provider in the State.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2005, 02:29:54 AM by B2 »
Ben(B2)
Crossdressing SES & CFS member

Offline oz fire

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #65 on: October 06, 2005, 05:29:24 PM »
B2 that is a huge urban myth and generalisation - get outside of the greater adelaide area and into the rest of this huge state and the communities are aware who provides the services, also unlike those in the big smoke, although they know who does it, most don't care who it is, they are greatful that people from their community undertake the task, regardless of uniform or service.

Maybe the Adelaide perception for RCR is because the Fire Services are the only providers in the Greater Adelaide area (which includes the surrounding suburban masses and most of SA's population) - I'm guessing Yankalilla or Murray Bridge would be the closest RCR teams to Adelaide with a primary RCR response????
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the ability to control it.

Wagon 1

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #66 on: October 06, 2005, 05:33:15 PM »
Well SAPOL are actually still the combatant authority for vehicle accidents in this state.

Offline kat

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #67 on: October 07, 2005, 02:11:05 PM »
In the areas we serve I think the reverse is actually true. The public perception is that the CFS does bushfires and nothing else. They believe SES does all rescue.

Murray Bridge MFS has very limted rescue capabilities and is only the town response. Murray Bridge SES do all the surrounding areas (ie freeway) and therefore the lions share of rescue in that area.

Tailem Bend CFS covers 1st rescue halfway to MB, halfway to Coonalpyn (CFS Rescue), halfway to Meningie (SES Rescue), halfway to Karoonda (CFS Rescue) and halfway to Lameroo (CFS Rescue) (over 50km). But most of the people in this area would not generally be aware CFS does rescue.
There's a difference between genius and stupidity -- genius has it's limits.

Offline OMGWTF

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #68 on: October 09, 2005, 01:50:25 AM »
murray bridge SES is actually the RCR response to all MVAs in and around murray bridge, MFS in murray bridge are not a rescue resource as per the directory (look it up youll be amazed at how many retained MFS either arent rcr resources at all or are dual-response)

does anyone else get the perception from this thread of;

"mines bigger than yours!!!" "no mines bigger.." "no mine is..." "no mine."

Offline JamesGar

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #69 on: October 09, 2005, 08:47:26 AM »
Quote
Maybe the Adelaide perception for RCR is because the Fire Services are the only providers in the Greater Adelaide area (which includes the surrounding suburban masses and most of SA's population) - I'm guessing Yankalilla or Murray Bridge would be the closest RCR teams to Adelaide with a primary RCR response?

CFS still is combatant for RCR in Yankalilla area. South Coast from Port Elliot has SES in the role.

Also SAPOL is the commanding authority for Vehicle related incidents (not vehicle fires though) but SES/MFS/CFS is the combatant authority.
James Gardiner
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strikeathird

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #70 on: October 09, 2005, 11:08:06 PM »
murray bridge SES is actually the RCR response to all MVAs in and around murray bridge, MFS in murray bridge are not a rescue resource as per the directory (look it up youll be amazed at how many retained MFS either arent rcr resources at all or are dual-response)

does anyone else get the perception from this thread of;

"mines bigger than yours!!!" "no mines bigger.." "no mine is..." "no mine."

hahaha...



Im still trying to work out what the SES does... ??




:P

Offline OMGWTF

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #71 on: October 09, 2005, 11:37:45 PM »
at the end of the day im sure they do a hell of a lot more jobs than us (in relation to the number of stations they have), but sure.. they do differant stuff to us, it is equally as important for them to exist as it is for us too..

Offline Mike

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #72 on: October 10, 2005, 10:10:06 AM »
Quote
they do differant stuff to us, it is equally as important for them to exist as it is for us too..

Well said  :-D

Offline OMGWTF

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #73 on: October 10, 2005, 12:36:49 PM »
Im still trying to work out what the SES does... ??

ok.. im a member of the cfs but this si my understanding, im sure chatty or B2 can add to this:

the ses does:

storm damage (trees, flooding, roofs flapping)
landsearch
vertical rescue
confined space rescue (in places)
vehicle accident rescue
urban search and rescue
structural stailisation jobs (im sure theres a better name for that)
marine rescue (in places)
lighting at crime scenes
shelter at crime scens etc..
assist in evacuating people during floods, fires, etc..
assist other services (SAAS with patient lifts, etc..)
animal rescues

etc etc etc...

Offline Robert-Robert34

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Re: What the SES does
« Reply #74 on: October 10, 2005, 02:03:11 PM »
The SES does all those tasks but it's very hard to get into the State Emergency Service if you live 20-25 mintues away from one as i've tried to join the SES during winter but have had my applications rejected because of response time from Kalangadoo to Millicent

Im hoping that my latest letter to the SES gets me a sub base membership so i can respond to emergencies around the Kalangadoo township which my brigade dont get paged to
Kalangadoo Brigade

 

anything