How do Oakbank have SES, do they have a truck?
Answered in another posting.
Yankalilla SES & CFS are similar. Not sure if all volunteers are both CFS & SES or how training is organised.
Why would you ever go unavailable anyway....
Has part of SES Unit procedures on long timeframe operation, a Unit will be listed 'do not call until xxxx hours'. This is done to rest its volunteers.
The Regional Commander will allocate resources from an adjoining Unit to cover. Later on the reverse will occur has part of a crew rotation pattern.
If a Unit has enough volunteers available, some Units will do crew rotation within the Unit itself. So they will limit the number of vehicles/crew responding to tasks while the rest sleep & eat.
The Senior Officer at the Unit makes the arrangements in consultation with the Regional Duty Officer.
Happens a lot in SES Central Region & has been occuring for many years. All part of OHS&W of operational volunteers.
The same when a specific area of Adelaide Metro area has many tasks, other Units from the quiet area are requested by Regional DO to assist.
..would it not be better to just get the page and use your local knowledge to respond the next best brigade??? That would only take 30 seconds.
If you set off the pagers of majority of the volunteers in a Unit that is sleeping, you wake them up !!! Not a good idea...
Regional Duty Officer would have already arranged coverage of their area, so it is in the BoM's or SES dispatch systems.
For urgent jobs, then Unit volunteers or Unit Duty Officer are woken. But this is rare.