SA Firefighter

Yeah we had the same thing, looks like london round but isn't quite, someone said they thought it might be a dairy coupling. And no matter how tight you do it up it still leaks when you put it under any pressure (only seem to get one turn on the thread instead of 2 or 3 on our london rounds).  The forestry couplings on 38's are good.

Has anyone mentioned the hose reel that only has 15m of hose on it?  We had a pretty new truck and it was quite advanced in many areas but so backward in hoses, couplings and branches (and no portable radios as already mentioned).

My company is one of the more generous around and provides 10 days per year as 'special leave' which includes emergency services, army reserves etc. The HR policy says to simply notify your manager as soon as possible.

I have so far used no more than 1 or 2 days per year (and some years none).  For these Vic fires, I spoke to my supervisor monday morning about the possibility of 5 day deployments and he was fine with that, just said to ring him and let him know if I was going. 

Later that day an email went out to the whole company from the managing director saying anyone involved with the fires could have as much (paid) special leave as they wanted.  We had 2 employees in Vic loose their houses and have approx 150 employees on leave involved in the cleanup including 25 CFA volunteers and 50 defence force reserves.

thanks will look into it.

There is a belief in my brigade (or perhaps it's just one vocal member) that the orange road cones cannot be stored on the pole next to the rear crew deck on our rural 24 appliance as they "blow off when you go on the highway".  Yet I see every other brigade with a rural 24 going around with them stored there apparently without problems.

Here's a pic of the type of pole I'm referring to:
http://www.fire-brigade.asn.au/gallery/pages/grassfirenairne2-2-09/index.html#45

I would like to store at least a couple there for them to be easily chucked overboard to mark a driveway or access gate on the way through.  Presently ours have to be stored between the mudflaps and chains by the rear wheels.

Has anyone had this actually happen or is it an old wifes/firies tale?

According to a cable installer a few years ago during the setup, some are on towers in the Murray Mallee area. But that is second-hand old knowledge, so could be wrong.

they were wrong or mistaken

But CFS are paying a lot of license fees to Australian Communications and Media Authority, so I would expect they still exist.

The info I have is the licences are for fireground VHF and HF.  Also CFS doesn't pay for ACMA licences.

it's a directive that's come out from the crown solicitor, nothing to get too excited over I would've thought

The CFS can't win with some of you guys, I can imagine all the crap if they issued $65 VHF radios (like the chinese ones you get on ebay).  The better quality of these radios generally work ok to start with but very quickly go out of spec (if they were ever in spec). 

The dollars quoted for the Icoms from tetracom is not just for a radio but a package of spare battery, case, programming, 5 yr warranty and overheads for tetracom to deal with all that is involved when invoicing the state govt. Just the bare radio itself is around $450 odd I think - but my opinion is for the quality of the radio that is too much but really who cares, you either need a piece of equipment or not, regardless of cost.  I completely agree that every appliance should be equipped with one VHF portable per person but of course there is no central funding for that but groups run their own budget and are free to buy as many extras as they want depending how important they decide this to be.

The official allocation of GRN portables was supposed to be 1 per appliance except specificed EMA and special purpose appliances get 2.  This was not always followed properly in some regions (but is pretty much the rule in region 1 at least).

We can work with MFS on the fireground at present, you just have to treat the MFS appliance as their own sector reporting on GRN (trunked or simplex) to the IC or DivCom (works better when you have a couple of MFS appliances and a district officer in a car, he can act as a strike team leader or sector commander).

I can understand people calling for an additional portable for appliances to be able to talk to the bombers but in the bigger picture that is not a good idea.  Other regions would have been better following region 6 lead and insisting the bombers use the incident talkgroup otherwise accept the fact that the bombers will not be able to talk to anyone until a command car arrives on scene (or the group duty officer relays between the incident TG and bombers).

Finally HF radios have not gone out, they are still around but the preference is satphones, every appliance in remote areas should have one, if not then talk to your group officer and put in a hazard form and make a fuss until you do.

As for photo's well this week i was and still am not happy about photo's that where taken by my wife and I of jobs or events that we have been to and the media unit just used them with out geting permission from us or by saying who took the photo's.

why?  you (or whoever) took them and posted them, presumably as a form of promoting the CFS, so why shouldn't the media unit also use them?  If some commercial mob (eg. a fire equipment supplier) used them in their advertising I could understand your point, but this is quite different.

Chariot is what most CFS groups use and you might get a discount

yes my group gets a good deal from chariot, have had it with them for several years now.  It's Internode the safecom IT people are installing in level 3 bases.  Internode are good, I use them at home, I just wonder why groups that get the safecom provided Internode connection are being charged around twice the rate we pay to chariot.

Given the fact that this is a public forum, it would be my advice to keep some of the "2nd guess type opinions to yourselves or pass any legitimate concerns up the official channels. This sort of banter does not do us any favours.

precisely (I wasn't going to bother saying anything but am glad you did). 

The only other thing I'd like to add is that the pager is only one way of being responded.  Do not criticise a brigade for "self responding" just because you didn't see a pager message sent to them.

I'm just curious as what the thought process was for the Lofty Group in having a siren sound for every job.

don't believe everything (or should that be 'anything') you read on here.  Under what circumstances a siren sounds is decided between the brigade and their local community (as per the CFS siren policy), sirens are not sounded for every job at every brigade in Mt Lofty group.  Those brigades that do trigger on CFSRES are on a day/night timer.

Do they even know what Alarms are?

there is certainly much confusion (and I am not completely clear on it either).  It's SOP 2.1 but I've heard many variations on what the levels actually mean.  Generally it seems 3rd alarm means a 'whole of group response', which is not the way things (should) work of course (closest most appropriate and all that) and depends on things like how many brigades and appliances in the group.

Have a read of the SOP, it says initial response of 3rd alarm is 8 appliances, but then the following table says for rural incidents on a TFB it's 'strike team' in addition to the initial 4 appliances.  I think it could be a lot clearer.

It also says "consideration to initial response of 3rd alarm resources for rural events reported on fire ban days".

I think you'll find that the relevant service is billed for time that each GRN radio is turned on. 

not that chestnut again, that's incorrect, it doesn't work like that.

the nearest tower will only broadcast 124's voice traffic when somebody's talking

Zippy, yes largely correct, if no traffic is on the talkgroup then no site voice frequency (ie. 'resource') is in use, but the radio is still using a 'slot' on the system (for your radio ID) and still taking up some space ('bandwidth' if you like) on the inter-site links, but that is all pretty minimal compared to using a site voice freq.

The biggest problem is people who are at an incident and have a radio on a talkgroup that is not being used as part of that incident, as traffic on that 'non-incident talkgroup' is then taking up local site resources that could be being used for talkgroups to run the incident, therefore increasing the likelihood of network busies for everyone, compromising the running of the incident and in the end, everyone's safety.