General Discussion > Country Fire Service

ES Reform

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Firedoc02:
With the current discussion around the Emergency Services Reform I thought I would run an idea past you all to see where it lands.....

Greater Metro area and all prescribed cities in SA be under the control of the SAMFS (fire, rescue and HAZMAT)
All areas outside of these areas would be prescribed CFS area. SES would still look after natural hazard and some rescue events across both areas.
CFS would manage all responses within their gazetted area including the current towns managed by MFS country command. This would give CFS the opportunity to have both full time firefighters and Volunteers. If a town is busy enough to currently warrant a retained brigade then those towns may get a minimum crew of full time day firefighters (CFS) backed up by volunteers (aka Mildura). A realistic risk assessment would need to be done on this before it became reality and most towns would revert to volunteer only.
In the Metro areas MFS would have the opportunity to also have paid firefighters backed up by volunteers if they thought the concept would work within their service. Those volunteer brigades like Salisbury could be used as surge capacity brigades for the CFS if MFS did not use them within their response plans.
In order to save a few dollars as the government wishes (don't look at the shared services model)then a number of services such as prevention, community education etc. could be amalgamated with service delivery via the separate directors (bid for service).

The advantage of this model is that we DON'T become one fire service. We DO become the master of our own destiny and we DO end up looking after our volunteers appropriately. There are cost savings built in, we drop the duplication of services seen in some country towns and we get consistency of service across the state

Anyhow just a thought for discussion....

cfsfirey911:
Everyone is entitled to an opinion on this but I see a different scenario developing.

Some bigger towns/brigades becoming MFS retained with possible day crewing eventually, eg Mt Barker, Nuriootpa etc. No such thing as CFS paid firefighters, CFS have already stated they are not overly interested in supporting urban risks nor have the funds to do it. So making these places MFS they get the better equipment and everyone gets trained in BA/hazmat/RCR which cant be done now.

SES will be limited to a few key locations and the fire services will do the rest of the areas. Places like Kapunda that have CFS/MFS and SES will have one service to do the lot creating less demand for volunteers. Ideally no one would lose paid positions.

Whilst CFA have volunteers and paid staff in some of the stations together I believe it would not work here too much of a change.

Firedoc02:
I don't think CFS has ever said that they are not interested in supporting urban risk??

Retained is nothing more than volunteers getting paid for their service. If a place requires anything more than a volunteer service why would you not make it a full time station with a minimum of 2 firefighters who support the volunteers by responding and triaging the incident as the volunteers arrive. This certainly could happen for Mt Barker and I doubt the excellent men and women at Nuriootpa would want to do anything different than they do now?

Apart for Legislation (which can be changed) there is nothng stoping CFS from having paid firefighters who would get all the gear a MFS paid station would get to mitigate the risk. Realistically what do MFS have that CFS doesnt have or couldn't get if the risk was there?

Unfortunately the Minister has already said that their will be job losses potentially from all services

You have made some good points thanks

pumprescue:
Just ask the Mt Barker guys how interested CFS are in moving forward with urban risk...........

Firedoc02:
What are the advantage of Mt Barker going to a retained station apart from a few dollars in the pockets of those that are selected ( may not be CFS trained people). Has the brigade put a business case to the region outlining their 5 year plan for responding to incidents as CFS in Mt Barker?  Lyndoch CFS did this about 6 years ago and have achieved their plan. I understand the SFEC process but if unhappy don't whinge about it, put a case to the region and hopefully they will either support you or provide good reasons why this can't be done. Reasoning is much better than an emotional  response.

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