SA Firefighter

Found an interesting website the other day when going through some information that a mate passed on to me. Would be good to see this style of system offered, on a non compulsory basis, in CFS/SES.

www.nifc.gov/FireFit/index.htm

What do people think?

Just a question...If we are having such a big whinge about CFS not being called to a job by SAAS why are you whinging about sending 2 rescues? What happens if there are two cars involved and there are 2 people trapped in separate cars, not fair for 1 person to get rescued and the other to have to wait..Better to respond 2 rescues and stop call one if you arrive on scene and a 2nd rescue is not required! 

Ok well if you think that you can get every agency comcen to get it right 100% of the time or even 99% of the time then I vote you should become our next Emergency Services Minister.

Do you mean comms operators in brigades of comcen officers?

If you mean comcen operators...i don't agree that a bunch of vollies should comment on the response and notification times of different agencies when they have NO real life experience in a comcen! It works two ways.

Generally speaking most of the calls that have entrapments that CFS aren't called to have more to do with people in the incident not giving people information and sometimes when it comes to country jobs it can take longer than 5 minutes to process a call when one person is taking a call and another person dispatches the call to the correct location and by the correct means.

Maybe there is a reason that some country SAAS avoid some CFS people...I would rather be in an accident in the country and be in a bad way to only have SAAS rock up than to have some CFS brigade try to take a punt at how to give me adequate first aid while they are waiting for SAAS and me never being able to walk again or me ending up worse than if i was left alone, and i am not referring to all CFS brigades but i am sure we all know someone that we wouldn't want to turn up and an MVA they were involved in for safety's sake!

And yes i know at times it can work the other way with SAAS trying to pull a person out with out rescue being on scene yet but that is a different topic all together.

No no they blow stuff up...its called over exaggerating to the media!! 

No no we should respond all brigades in that Group in case the car and the ambulance blow up...hey we can always stop call them if it doesn't happen 

Speaking of FGP's I am surprised that there isn't one for "Forming your opinion of the CFS, and its paid structure, based on your Brigades opinion". There seems to be enough of it going on around here

Oh I know if the grievance system doesn't work why doesn't everyone go to the media!! 

Oh wait no that's already happened and hey look things are still the same. Did anyone ever stop to think why? Probably because the CFS not being called can be justified.

Now this will, I am sure, see me cop an ear bashing from 90% of the forum but I will say it anyway. Consider that CFS was sent to all MVA's, including every little fender bender in the state, now not only does this tie up an emergency service that might be required elsewhere but it would also put increased pressure on all the comcens and waste a lot of time and money that could be used elsewhere. On the other side of the scale, how many times have you been to a MVA where the vehicle catches fire after a service has arrived on scene??? If there is no real threat of fire, no need for spill clean up and there is no need for rescue or assistance with first aid then why is there a need for CFS to be out there. This is why there are times that CFS are called way after the fact because SAAS don't need a bunch of vollies getting in their way while they do their job.

Having come from a reasonably busy brigade you get sick of responding to nothing MVA's it is a waste of volunteers time. I think that most of the problem is that people are just sticky beaks and want to get their call rates up! Just my opinion.

I understand what he's saying but I hope to god he doesn't use his own judgment on deciding who would be better of dead...
In addition my house doesn't/won't catch on fire....

Wow big attitude there!

I think that you are pretty harsh even suggesting that he would use his own judgement to decide who is better off dead, i don't think any person in that position would do anything of the sort. I don't think that you quite got the point that he was trying to make!

Jaff, I agree with you that there is a need for looking at and accepting shortcomings as emergency services but i think that there is more 'service bashing' than constructive criticism going on and i think that a lot of it comes down to all services, staff and volunteers, accepting that it is never going to be 100% achievable all the time. I am also certain that there is no one service that could take the moral high ground. Sorry if i haven't been able to express my view clearly to show that.

And yes most of the time everything goes right, however what if it was your family involved in that 1%?

Without seeming insensitive, which i am sure i will get called for this, unfortunately it is a cold hard fact of life that people do die and people do get seriously injured, yeah it sucks but it happens and most of the time the damage is done before any emergency service are responded or can get to them. The fact that most of these occurrences are in the country probably double the chance of them happening because of their remoteness from emergency services and from other people who might be passing by.

What ever way you want to look at this there is never going to be a 100% success rate in anything aspect of CFS, MFS, SAAS, SAPOL, SES or any other agency in the world. There is always going to be that 1% chance that something is not going to be done correctly whether it be through human error, which happens from time to time for a huge number of reasons, or through a lack of information given to emergency services from people who call these jobs in. Through feel free to correct me if you are perfect and could do the job right 100% of the time! 

More indepth training should be introduced for structure fires but, sorry to those brigades that do maybe 3 structure jobs a year, the training should be limited to brigades in the urban and urban/rural category then the rural/urban category as a matter of need in those areas.