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Messages - Darius

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26
we use ctek 24V chargers which are connected when the trucks are in the station.  Have heard rumours there can be problems with calcium batteries fitted in new trucks but fortunately/unfortunately we don't have a problem with that due to not having a new truck.  The trucks are always kept isolated but we still used to occasionally find a flat battery and have to roll start a truck (mainly our 14) which is why we fitted the chargers to the station about 2-3 years ago, have not had a problem since.

27
yeah but if we're not careful we'll make DEH too scared to do any burns then SA will end up like states like Victoria.  I do think DEH seem to be relying far too much on aircraft though.

28
Country Fire Service / Re: News Flash
« on: February 23, 2012, 09:12:01 AM »
Should be interesting for MFS.....

well put! (and you can say that again in spades!)


29
You must be from region 2

probably, but could be R6, you don't hear a lot about R6 (well I don't anyway) but since the 2005 Eyre Peninsula fires I get the impression from talking to people, they've come a long way.

30
I think the last couple of years we've been heading more and more back to the "old days" of brigades/groups doing their own thing, mainly driven by the fact we have such incompetent staff.  However for my brigade that's not such a bad thing, we're happy to tick along making small improvements to the way we operate, ignoring anything above group level and just get on with the job. 

One positive thing of such poor management and leadership (sic) from HQ/region is I that can see my neighbouring brigades (and group officers) working together probably better than ever before.

31
SA Firefighter General / Re: SACAD
« on: February 02, 2012, 08:49:23 AM »
Quote from: Alex
Im sure there will always be those who disagree with the system and have a whinge about losing control, ie no more ALERTS calls, no more 'just going for a look' as every dispatch will be as per SOP, no more choosing who comes to back you up [unless its a specialist resource] etc...

But, it will be much better than the system we currently have. Finally CFS will have response data in the CAD.

no doubt it will be a much better system. I think you're being a bit idealistic (hope you're right but somehow I doubt it) but again we will see...

it's been over 2 months now since SACAD went live, has it delivered as promised?

from the AF comms point of view have ALERTS calls changed?

personally I don't see initial responses that much different than before (ignoring teething problems and things like the dopey crap in pager messages that needs to be fixed, eg. remove all that Alarm level stuff and just show the latest). But something it hasn't fixed is enforcing the "closest most appropriate" thing, I still see some groups continue to respond their entire group (listing brigades by name) before any closer neighbours.


32
I'm curious Alex (or the other AF guys reading this) how SACAD can still dispatch the likes of Ironbank instead of Iron Knob, Stirling instead of Stirling North etc, given it's location/map-based and computer/database recommended appliances?  It was understandable it could happen occasionally with BOMS where an operator not paying enough attention could pick the wrong entry in a drop-down list but if the operator is now out of the equation, how does it still happen?

33
SA Firefighter General / Re: GRN paging software
« on: January 10, 2012, 09:28:23 AM »
Is Airsource Pro still able to be used?  I was using at the Station only a week ago but now it won't work.  I need to figure out if the program/software/company is now defunct or I have another PC issue.
Thanks,

yes you can still use Airsource if you wish. Must be a PC, modem or phone line problem if it's now stopped working for you. 
It's still on the PC at my station but haven't used it for yonks, we use a version of the sagrn-provided website customised for my group/brigade.

34
Region 2 are kicking 1's asses.

R2 have been in everything (not just planning) for a while now. Giving people 15mins, or an hour, notice to go away for 3-5 days is very poor organisational planning and very poor treatment of volunteers (especially for a fire that has been going for some time).

As for the Victor group pages, I'm very surprised the GO did that. A 10am departure to drive that distance would make no practical difference on the fireground.

35
SA Firefighter General / Re: SACAD
« on: December 28, 2011, 09:02:10 AM »
STRL INFO: FROM DGO 3 STOP FOR CALL.... SACAD ERROR. 27/12/2011 16:21:27 - CFS Stirling Info     :roll:

yeah well I don't think the good old stirling to stirling north (or ironbank to iron knob, myponga to mypolonga etc etc) is a sacad error as such, it happened under BOMS too, it's just straight-forward operator error.

36
SA Firefighter General / Re: GRN paging
« on: December 15, 2011, 09:02:20 AM »
Last figure I was quoted by region was $30 per pager per month to have it 'active'

That is why it is so important to do a pager audit regularly,  so lost and damaged pagers can be removed from the database,  and not charged for, and these dollars can be spent elsewhere

MrT

it doesn't work like that, but some staff present those type of numbers as a simplified description. GRN paging is part of the overall GRN contract, managed by Justice (AGD) not CFS. CFS have a set sum taken from their budget by Justice and given to Motorola each year for everything GRN. I think paging (last I heard) was around $3 to $4 million per year total for CFS. So the $30pm figure comes from some people dividing the totals by the number of pagers issued to CFS but of course it's not that simple. If we add or remove pagers from the fleetmap up to a certain point we don't get charged any more or less but if CFS was to add say 500 extra pagers then Justice would likely increase the amount they take. I'm not convinced if numbers were reduced the charge would decrease but it's never happened yet so who knows.

Anyway I would look at hutchison/three/voda for paging for something like St John I reckon in preference to GRN.  GRN paging overall is good but has drawbacks, eg. it is expensive, it's only in SA (and slightly over the border) and there are limitations on what hardware (eg. pagers, decoders etc) you can use both imposed by the govt/motorola and due to the fact it's flex rather than the more common pocsag protocol, and programming changes are expensive if done under the contract (your organisation could do it themselves if you have eg. the apollo pagers though).

37
SA Firefighter General / Re: SACAD
« on: December 13, 2011, 09:30:55 AM »
With the distance in SA maybe it just needs to be accepted you cant have a truck everytime.

yeah it's what I meant by not really practical in this case to follow the SOP.  If Marla is 2hr drive + get mobile time then might as well not have them on the initial page and if Coober Pedy arrive and find they need help then call Marla, it will only add 10-15mins (guess) which isn't going to make a lot of difference I wouldn't have thought in this case.

38
SA Firefighter General / Re: SACAD
« on: December 11, 2011, 09:32:58 PM »

Interesting in remote areas, I guess these 2 are the nearest as per SACAD:

22:34:33   11-12-11   MFS: *CFSRES INC0092 11/12/11 22:34 RESPOND VEHICLE FIRE INC LPG, LOT 227 GILES ST COOBER PEDY,MAP:CPD 1 K14,TG 073, ==CAR ON FIRE NEXT TO HOUSE FROM SAPOL :COOB34 MRLA34 :  -- CFS Marla Response
22:34:31   11-12-11   MFS: *CFSRES INC0092 11/12/11 22:34 RESPOND VEHICLE FIRE INC LPG, LOT 227 GILES ST COOBER PEDY,MAP:CPD 1 K14,TG 073, ==CAR ON FIRE NEXT TO HOUSE FROM SAPOL :COOB34 MRLA34 :  -- CFS Coober Pedy Response

but Marla is 230km from Coober Pedy:

22:37:13   11-12-11   FROM PHIL R4 STOP FOR CALL  -- CFS Marla Response

not really practical to respond both on initial page (despite SOPs).

39
HAZMAT / Re: First alarm response
« on: December 07, 2011, 07:34:48 PM »
so bit of an obvious question but..... how come it's ok to have a SACAD response that doesn't conform to the SOP in one incident type but not in any others?  so obviously SOPs are just guidelines after all then.

40
SA Firefighter General / Re: Linkq / quantum multimedia in receivership
« on: November 14, 2011, 10:45:19 AM »
Xacom do GRN paging.  And of course there's still 3/Hutchison.

41
SA Firefighter General / Re: SACAD
« on: October 05, 2011, 08:49:59 AM »
So.. go live is just under three weeks away.

Have any groups or brigades received official direction from the CFS about new requirements for resource tracking? SACAD will require appliances statewide to book ack, mobile, arrived and clear of call. Wondering if this info has been disseminated, and if not when it will?

Perhaps something brigades should have been getting into the swing of for the last few months.

you're talking about planning and disseminating of information? in the CFS? you're such a joker Alex!

42
Country Fire Service / Re: Self responding and getting egg on face
« on: September 26, 2011, 08:42:10 AM »
I can only assume there is something more to this that I'm obviously not aware of (or it's a storm in a teacup).

43
Country Fire Service / Re: Self responding and getting egg on face
« on: September 23, 2011, 09:10:48 AM »
you said they "self responded via the paging network" so do you mean someone in the brigade paged the brigade to respond rather than contacting AF and getting them to send the page? That's not really "going to jobs on the quiet" (not "quite"), if you want to do that then you do a ring around and don't use the paging system :)

and it's not what I think "self responding" means, I think that's when you respond an appliance to an incident outside your area without an invitation.

But apart from not then getting a job number allocated and all that guff, how's it really make any difference to the job getting done or not and whether things turn to poo or not?

44
Country Fire Service / Re: Firefighter Response System
« on: September 09, 2011, 10:44:35 AM »
brigades or groups using their own initative and doing stuff themselves is the only way any new stuff like this finds it's way into the CFS.  If a brigade can come up with a system that they find beneficial to use then good on them.

you seem to have some sort of objection or concern Mr Flyonthewall?

45
Country Fire Service / Re: Firefighter Response System
« on: September 07, 2011, 10:38:59 AM »
how much does it cost?
their website says $65 per month but implies that's flexible (I suspect it's way out of my brigade's budget though)

46
Country Fire Service / Re: Pager Acknowledgement messages
« on: August 31, 2011, 12:41:34 PM »
Issues I have noticed is Link or whoever it is have trouble with agency names and spelling and the message getting to AF takes sometimes more than 10 mins which is well over the default time limit. I prefer to use the radio to ack the page.

do you know for certain these delays you mention are within Link? not that the brigade takes 10mins to phone them?

once you are speaking to an operator they fill in the fields directly on their screen and send it, it should appear on the paging system within seconds. If not then report it.

47
SA Firefighter General / Re: SACAD
« on: August 31, 2011, 12:34:55 PM »
Quote from: Alex
Dates are not set by the services, that would be coming straight from the ministers office.

yes the minister announced 25th Oct a few weeks back. So either it will go live on the 25th and everyone will just make it work, or it will be delayed until it's actually ready. Time will tell which way it goes...

Quote from: Alex
Im sure there will always be those who disagree with the system and have a whinge about losing control, ie no more ALERTS calls, no more 'just going for a look' as every dispatch will be as per SOP, no more choosing who comes to back you up [unless its a specialist resource] etc...

But, it will be much better than the system we currently have. Finally CFS will have response data in the CAD.

no doubt it will be a much better system. I think you're being a bit idealistic (hope you're right but somehow I doubt it) but again we will see...

48
Country Fire Service / Re: Who is looking after our media section
« on: July 28, 2011, 09:58:27 AM »
I noticed the strange silence from the media section on that stirling housefire. Maybe groups should start doing their own? quick one para write up and post it online somewhere (maybe here since the media read this site).

49
Country Fire Service / Re: Fire cuts put lives in danger
« on: July 20, 2011, 02:23:19 PM »
Its quite clear that Mr Foley is just winding down his career and couldn't give 2 hoots about his portfolio.....just what we want..

when did the emergency services portfolio ever get a decent minister? (I can't think of one)

50
Country Fire Service / brigade promotional stuff
« on: July 12, 2011, 10:09:10 AM »
hi guys, can anyone recommend me companies that do a good deal on promo stuff for brigades?  everything from stubby holders, keyrings to clothing (t-shirts/polo shirts/jackets/caps) and so on?  I've seen some ads around for such places but am after actual "my brigade used this mob and they were good" type recommendations...


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