Minimum Response Standards.

[Alex]

Is it just me or is anyone else fed up with seeing single appliance responses to incidents? And im not talking about rubbish fires, tree downs, etc... Im talking about structure fires, alarm calls, vehicle fires and rescue not going to VAs.

Then when a brigade gets themselves turned out john wayne style, they more often than not end up hitting the more crew required button??

And before we all blame comms, lets remember 90% of CFS brigades get a phone call asking them who they want sent.

So why are we not following our own service SOPs, and common sense? Brigades doing this are only endangering the communities they clame to protect.

[Heavy Rescue]

Yes that is an issue Alex. I can't understand how come the Regions sign off on the WFAM response plans with just one brigade on it, in some cases to A Class facilities. Seems like you are just asking for trouble.

[Alex]

Mmmm good luck managing the evacuation of a hospital or nursing home with one appliance fellas!!!

[Robert-Robert34]

It depends on the area though Alex for example a tree over the road job is responded to by a brigade that has a chainsaw and chainsaw certified operators pending on the size of the tree more than 1 appliance is paged

[Alex]

Robert if you re-read my post more carefully, ive said one appliance for tree downs is fine...

But one truck for a housefire or a fire alarm is not acceptable per CFS SOPs, so why is it allowed to continue. There not one off occurences, hardly a day goes by without a response to something somewhere not meeting SOP.

[SA Firey]

Robert if you re-read my post more carefully, ive said one appliance for tree downs is fine...

But one truck for a housefire or a fire alarm is not acceptable per CFS SOPs, so why is it allowed to continue. There not one off occurences, hardly a day goes by without a response to something somewhere not meeting SOP.

Im with you on this Alex, not to mention the amount of groups that send command cars to alarm calls, tree fires etc, so an appliance doesn't have to respond

The minimum response is a 2.4 appliance with a minimum of 3 crew as per OMG 45

[Darren]

I know myself Alex on alerts calls you practically have to beg a response let alone a correct response.

Regions need to enforce SOP's, most let them slide, but in the end someone will pay for it, most likely the victim.

I think the more crew button is the single most used button, people seem reluctant to resource job's properly from the start, and reluctant to default if they have no crew.

There seems to be to much fear from the paid staff to tell the vols to go by the SOP's. Do they not realise that in the end the staff wear the penalties!

[Mike]

There seems to be to much fear from the paid staff to tell the vols to go by the SOP's. Do they not realise that in the end the staff wear the penalties!

Let alone to much fear from the vollies, that their brigade will be seen in a bad light if they do default.....

[Zippy]

mmmm defaulting isnt a bad thing...infact its a positive thing...as the action taken ensures an appropriate response still is occuring...

[bittenyakka]

I'll admit taht my brigade has been somewhat guilty of this at times. For you MFS guys Can;t you say Sorry taht response does not fir the SOP you need to do this or this ? in the end it doesn;t take much for you to page another truck.

what do staff wear more blame for sending non SOP response or tellign volllies to follow SOP?

[BundyBear]

All  rubbish aside the buck stops at the Captain, Lieutenants or the most senior brigade member at the time the pager drops and should be managed better by Group Officers and give them more power to do so...

1. The issues are brigades not defaulting when they should.
2. Responding with inadequate crews on appliances for the given incident.
3. Putting stops on brigades from other neighbouring stations or groups before they have fully assessed the incident.
4. Poorly written Group response plans that rely to heavily on that groups resources when sometimes other group resources are closer and more practical and should be included.

[/quote]

I'm with you on this Alex, not to mention the amount of groups that send command cars to alarm calls, tree fires etc, so an appliance doesn't have to respond


[/quote]

Group cars to alarm calls so appliances don't have to move I've heard of rumours like that, does nothing for others services and the public accepting us as professional.

[6739264]

Isn't the best way to solve a problem such as this, which is occurring state wide on a regular basis, is merely to take control AWAY from the local brigades?

I understand that we are still waiting for the all encompassing, gods gift to CRD - SACAD (but hell, we've been waiting for that since '86) but really, give the control to comms.

Multiple calls? Comms can upgrade the response. No appliance booked mobile in 4/6min? Comms turns out the next brigade. The current system does not allow this, and is frankly bullshit.

The problem at the moment is with comms, not the operators, but the system and the way it functions.

I do still agree that regions and groups should be all over brigades that don't follow SOP's, but what can you do when there are groups out there running their own show?

Oh and before I forget... more than one appliance to a Vehicle Fire? C'MON GUYS... Learn to fight fire!

[rescue5271]

SACAD will not fix all problems, The problem is state wide and needs to be fixed only way to fix things is to fill in the paperwork and send it up the ladder.As for Adealide fire calling alerts ye right it only happens if there not busy....

[tft]

SACAD is a joke, what have they done!

[bittenyakka]

than one appliance to a Vehicle Fire? C'MON GUYS... Learn to fight fire!

I assume you are talking about fighting the fire rather than the response SOP? if so yea i agree

[BundyBear]

than one appliance to a Vehicle Fire? C'MON GUYS... Learn to fight fire!

I assume you are talking about fighting the fire rather than the response SOP? if so yea i agree

One appliance can extinguish a car fire granted but you have to look at the overall risk. I feel it is a 2 appliance response and you can easily stop a resource if not required. Examples- Stolen vehicle burning on the side of the road during summer, say no more. Vehicle on fire in an urban setting under or next to buildings. Vehicles on LPG requiring the cylinder to be cooled.

[Alex]

Oh and before I forget... more than one appliance to a Vehicle Fire? C'MON GUYS... Learn to fight fire!

All well and good mate, just remember some brigades cant get the truck out the door or BA wearers, hence paging one brigade by itself is still rubbish.

[rescue5271]

People need to look at briagde and group response plans and read what it say for each risk having said that looks at SOP'S and if its still not right fill in the paperwork and send it up the line...mind you its hard to have any sort of plan if those in Adealide fire dont follow CFS SOP'S.....

[Alex]

People need to look at briagde and group response plans and read what it say for each risk having said that looks at SOP'S and if its still not right fill in the paperwork and send it up the line...mind you its hard to have any sort of plan if those in Adealide fire dont follow CFS SOP'S.....

Geez Bill, you certainly seem to hate Adelaide Fire dont ya? Remember, theyre not there to enforce CFS SOP. They are there to respond brigades as specified by either BOMS data, or vollies on ALERTS.

Adelaide Fire is not the problem [and i say that without bias].

The problem is vollunteers on ALERTS trying to keep jobs to themselves for unknown reasons and slack regions not kicking filtered.

[rescue5271]

Alex i did not say I hate Adelaide fire, If we are going to have all these problems fixed by 2011 when SACAD is ment to come online then we all need to make sure we follow all information that is in the PC.. As for alerts well then those in the city should follow the rules and call it when they dont ahve any information on the PC about a area........

[Alex]

Bill, you make multiple comments in differant threads, always bagging. And you seem to have no real idea... "follow all the information in the PC".... what information? CFS state & region never supplied data when the CRD transition happened, hence the ALERTS calls and the ridiculous responses when joe the farmer thinks one truck to a grassie is fine on a TFB. And all AFAs were signed off by regions... yep one brigade to a hospital or nursing home? She'll be right!

Thats probably enough from me, because this is being pulled away from my initial gripe as a CFS vollie, seeing my own service acting completely unprofesionally... but i'd love to know where you get your info from Bill as you obviously have no idea what systems are being used and what information CFS provides.

[rescue5271]

Alex, I think you need to go back and look into where you got your information as some not all regions have given information for the transition over to CRD. I am well aware of what systems CFS use. It is true that some brigades/groups only turn out one brigade to a job but that one brigade may have 2 or 3 appliances in the one station. If we where to turn out a second station to every fixed alarm we had in my group it would not take long for the rural brigades to get pissed off. Keep in mind that some brigades in the country are about 20 to 30 mins apart not like in the city where there every 10kms or closer.....

Will SACAD fix this problem ??

[CFS_Firey]

Is it just me or is anyone else fed up with seeing single appliance responses to incidents?

...

So why are we not following our own service SOPs, and common sense? Brigades doing this are only endangering the communities they clame to protect.

Back to the original topic....

While I agree that we should be following SOPs and playing it safe for our community, we also need to remember that many brigades are struggling for volunteers and crews, so we don't want to burden them unnecessarily. You know, the boy that cried wolf etc. etc.

Playing devil's advocate here...  If a nursing home's alarm goes off every week, and it's always a false alarm, is it really better for the community to take 12 people away from their jobs or families to go and reset it when you could achieve the same with a crew of 4?

It's true you can always stop extra resources, but is it worth the cost on volunteers?  Maybe it is, but I'm guessing a lot of brigades have decided it isn't...

Baring in mind I come from a group that goes to the other extreme and responds a thousand appliances to anything, so I might have it all wrong...

[Darren]

Adelaide fire has no power at all to enforce SOP's for the CFS or SES.

Alerts isn't always the answer, often not answered or get a bunch of non CFS members who don't know the first thing about response plans.

A lot of brigade that only have the single station response have a number of brigades around them.

The stuff you hear on the radio in some areas is enough to make you want to reach down the radio and strangle some of these damn red hats. I don't even want to call it dad's army, at least Captain Mainwaring followed some sort of quidelines....even as recently as a few days ago something I heard from the south east made me turn white with shock then red with anger.

But I guess nothing will change when there are no consequences for people's actions.....poor volly, was only trying his best 

[Heavy Rescue]

A mate of mine was in a brigade in a fairly well known grape growing district, one job he told me about was at a call to a fire alarm at the local hospital.

He was the only one to respond to the station so he rang the Group Officer to confirm that another brigade was being responded. The Group Officer's response was to tell him to take a drive in his own vehicle out to the job and reset the panel. This was when my mate was new to the CFS and didn't know any better. Scary to think that this was only a year or so ago.

Thankfully there has been a significant change in personnel in that Group and things are starting to slowly improve.