SA Firefighter

If I were the glass-half-full kind of person, I'd say not enough is better than nothing at all.

But I'm not.
Seems to me that neither mob "get it".

This looks like another half-sucked lolly casually tossed our way (with fanfare) to trick voters.

We need more like an EXTRA $80M over 4 years, not $13M.

We need more staff - more "bureaucracy" as Isobel calls it.

Having a single Region Officer handling prevention (including home fire safety & compliance, vegetation management) and managing training is ridiculous.

Having 2 people attempting to manage a fleet of 1,000 vehicles including design & commissioning is a bad joke.

Whether we employ enough full-time trainers, or a CFSVA suggestion to pay hourly rates to volunteer instructors, there's still something like $9M EXTRA PER YEAR needed, just for training.

Too early to celebrate yet people.
Start thinking about funding banners at the election, and about getting disruptive around April.

Cherry Gdns (Thorley Rd) strip is on SA Water land - Mt Bold reserve.
Has a 90KL tank fed from both a bore 1km away & a big farm dam (which has
yet to recover from the last 2 seasons' bombing). Only used for bombing.
And refilling tankers.

Aldinga aerodrome has been used in the past. Pretty much any GA strip could
be comandeered. Issue is water supply, rather than 'permission'.
Got half an idea the strip at Old Noa, just east of Main Sth Rd might also
have been used in days gone by.

Attended the R1 CFSVA meeting tonight.
Well worth the trouble. There was a fair bit of normal business to transact, but
the funding issue is the biggie for the moment & for the forseeable future.

Can't print too much here. Strategies & plans.  Details will be sent to groups &
brigades over the next week or so.  Key thing is influencing the Budget submissions
in may. If that means influencing election platforms in March, so be it.
We need at least an extra $20M/year out of Govt, just to maintain or meet the
absolute minimum standards in our SFECs.  We need quite a lot more than that
to support training & equipment at a level for us to do our job properly.

The important thing is that brigade members join in the CFSVA campaign, rather
than just whinging amongst ourselves.

Are you arguing PBI shouldn't be worn with widlfire gear because you'll get too hot, or because your ensemble won't meet the Australian Standard?  I can appreciate that some members would overheat and run into trouble, but I'm not convinced that's ground enough to blame the PPE and ban it...

Not quite that simplistic.
There's a time & a place for each type of PPE.
I say understand the functions of the different PPE & wear the appropriate
ensemble to meet the actual risks of the job. A bit hard to
guessimate the exact details before arrival, but the general info is there -
weather & job type.
 
Dress to your real risks rather than a dogmatic "'x' PPE gives better protection."

The obvious ones are rural fires on hot days, & interior attack on cold ones.

Some contrary examples as far as The Roolz go...

when mopping up on the night after a cold front comes through, there's not
much risk of overheating in anything. Same for attending a rubbish fire on a wet
May evening.

On the other hand, standing around in structural with a stop/slow bat at an
RCR on a 35deg day because "it offers better protection" is also pretty stupid.

The Standards are intended to give some sort of measurable characteristics
to manufacturers, purchasers, and users.
Policies & SOPs are written for the lowest common denominator. And we've all
met just one or two of them...
Neither replace Mk.1 brain. They are useful to guide thinking.
And to cover the backsides of the people wearing legal responsibility for
our health & safety.

Thanks for the correction on the Lion gear's breathability (is that a real word?)
I guess my point about insulation properties preventing metabolic heat escaping
stands. The cooling mechanism is severely obstructed, although not completely.
Evaporating sweat directly off the skin seems to be be most effective.
Wicking it away first, then evaporating it is of some benefit, but not as much.

cheers

Quote from: Alan J on January 26, 2010, 11:13:53 AM

Simple.
L3 garments do not have the metabolic heat dissipation function of L1 garments. Therefore, your L1 protection is compromised.  

I always thought Australian PPE standards were in relation to what level of protection you got from external hazards only.  If not, wouldn't wearing long sleeved shirts or pants under your wildfire PPE "compromise" your protection and effectively mean you're not wearing gear that meets the standard?

Quote from: Alan J on January 26, 2010, 11:13:53 AM

Same is true of using structural helmets at bush fires.

Remember your basic fire safety - not all hazards are external.

And yes I'm in a Group which only issues structural helmets.  

Isn't the issue with structural helmets that they're heavier, not warmer?

It's an issue, not the only one.  And there are lots of ways to lessen the
effectiveness of your PPE...

Caveat: I am more familiar with the AS for helmets (1801.3 & 4067) than I
am for ensembles. However, much has been written about both in various
technical forums including AFAC, EMA journals & CSIRO joint research with
fire services.)

The two sets of PPE are designed to defeat different primary & secondary threats.

The primary threat from rural fires is radiant heat, closely followed by
metabolic heat accumulating over many hours in a warm environment.
Radiant heat blocking is well understood.
Metabolic heat removal is achieved by promoting ventilation, specifically to
speed evaporation of sweat. Remember FF1/BFF1 - evaporation is how sweating
cools you, not just its presence on the skin. Wearing long clothes under rural
PPE can interfere with it, but such clothing is normally relatively light.
Water vapour from your sweat can still escape through that and the unsealed
outer shell, lowering humidity inside, and allowing more sweat to evaporate.
Because it needs to breathe, rural PPE has little insulating ability.

Structural PPE is intended to completely insulate the wearer from a lethally
hot atmosphere for a period of time. It therefore must not breathe at all. If
it breathes, it allows that hot atmosphere inside. Bad karma man. Clothing
that doesn't allow outside atmosphere in, also prevents inside from getting
out. Your sweat evaporates until the atmosphere inside your sauna suit is fully
saturated. Then it ceases to evaporate & just heats to body or exterior temp,
giving no cooling effect whatsosever.  Hopefully, by the time it gets to be a
real problem, you have blown your CABA cylinder and can come outside to cool
down again.

All the above applies to helmet design as well, plus some measures of impact &
penetration resistance, and attachment security. Rural helmet is designed to
ventilate the scone, structural to insulate it. Rural hat achieves ventilation
with some trade-off in impact resistance, but of course it can be made much
lighter without all that insulation in it.

I read somewhere that, although the head only accounts for about 10% of body
surface area, it accounts for 20% of body heat loss. Or absorption. That's on a
naked body, or one immersed in water. On a PPE clad body, the figure would be
higher. Yet for some reason it is felt ok to ignore this & seal the head in a
structure hat at rural fires. I'm not convinced that taking the structural hat
off for 15mins in every hour is entirely effective.  And the way trees were
dropping at the last few fires we've been at, methinks a rural hat worn 100% of
the time is a safer way to play than a stronger structure hat worn only 75%.

make sense ?

Thanks Baggyassfirey.
First I've heard from CFSVA.  Methinks someone there really needs to review
their information dissemination methods.

Tell them we'll have to walk to a fire....that might help.

I like Rainer's idea better.
Announce in about April that the Group has run out of money.

Alan's rebuttal is first class...... if you want to win the media war, then u need to be able to refute the Government spin quickly and accurately. Sadly it appears our paid for CFSVA staff struggle to find the means to do this

My vote....Alan for CFSVA Pres

get knotted! people in those positions have to be able to negotiate with
people who don't give a stuff. "be it on your own head" is as near as I get.

Besides which, these sorts of stoushes need a good cop / bad cop tag team.
Good cop is the CFSVA. Good cop behaves nicely & gets the credit for any
'wins'. Bad cop is... any volunteers who have had a gutful of half measures &
half funding & want to make life less rosy for North Tce.  

Now... who has elderly 24's & 34's that need exercising (or was that excising)...

I can tell you now CFS blow MFS out of the water with large incident management and I've seen it and heard it from MFS firies.

Might not last long though.  
The Tassie experience of one fire service was swimmingly good.
For about the first five years.

Since then, Incident Management experience has become a pre-requisite for full-
timers who want promotion to Station Officer or beyond. As IMT scale fires are
relatively infrequent, this means that volunteers are excluded to allow paid
firies to get their tickets punched - irrespective of ability.
IMT competence, knowledge & experience in volunteers is of no value.  For the
volunteer, there is no real role in the Service beyond crew leader/captain, and
then only of small rural brigades. When you are no longer fit to be on a truck,
it's off to meals-on-wheels or whatever.

Like CFA, it is only a recipe for success if volunteers are content to be nothing
"more" than hose-draggers.

Bike race goes to Woodside first, then into the wind heading to Goolwa.
People south of the freeway will be scratching their heads about a fire ban.

MLR          GFDI    FFDI
Mt Crawford   82 EXT  76  EXT
Kuitpo           18 H    16  H
Strathalbyn  21 H     -

Jaff
You might also have noticed that CFSVA hasn't stepped in here to shut down the thread.
'nuff said about that.

I think all the other things you question have been covered in the thread
already, or in other threads going back to when this site was started. Not
going to do your research for you.

Personally, I really hope it doesn't come to action. I hate confrontation.

Hmmmm I think we would get arrested Alan and the general public especially the lycra wearing bike pedalling cafe latte types would be in tears!

 

On what charge ?
A bunch of brigades just happened to go for a training drive which found
themselves in the city at around the same time. Everyone wearing seatbelts,
obeying road rules, etc, etc.
They might stop to compare vehicles with colleagues & do a quick truck check
(including a siren test)?
They might do a couple of laps of Vicky Sq - you just never know when you
might have to do a COQ to station 20.

And everyone knows that our baggy daggy yellows are a much more better chick-
magnet than lycra, especially we more generously proportioned older members.
 

Except on Sunday 24th Jan when the finale of the Big Bike Race will be on in the CBD...
 

<musing out loud> the strike team idea would be the way to do it.
Zero notice of intent would make it harder to block.
One thing we do very well in CFS is bring together large numbers of people at very short notice
(even if we can't afford to train them properly for all that is expected of them).  

Sunday afternoon 24th Jan. somewhere in the city (where the newsies will be).
Much less inconvenient to members than Friday afternoon...
My diary says I'm free.

People, only 9 weeks to an election.
Time to write letters.
Time to ring your local pollie.
Time to ACT.
(unless you're just a whiner, in which case you what you deserve from the govt... Nothing at all.)

Happy New Year

Would probably require (yet another) re-write of the Act. As far as I can make out,
MFS section is the only part which has stuff in it relating to paid fire-fighters.
CFS section implies all brigades are volunteer except for industry brigades & DEH.

Quite aside from that, everyone knows there's nothing outside Adelaide metro
area that is of enough value to warrant spending $1M per year on a full-time
fire station.