SA Firefighter

14 pumpers i agree wid making them a 12 instead just like the METS appliances i say go ahead and build them and stow them with a full rcr and urban stowage i say my brigade at Stirling north could do with one of those we could do with a extra fire fightng apparatus to go with our 24P and 34P

The only drama with these 14 pumpers is the actual size of the truck once you load the mup with BA, RCR gear etc they are bogged down with weight.

The idea of these small pumpers only works in some hills brigades where the smaller size helps them get into tight driveways access points etc.

Does not really matter in the past they have been to small and the current builds are to small as well. Hope you're not at an urban fringe brigade that may go to an MFS job and have to boost an aerial as you wont be able to not to mention sprinkler systems as well.

CFS management just don't get it they need to release that these hybrid type of appliances like 34P/24P just do not cut it at urban fringe brigades or busy brigades in major country towns. Maybe fine for less busier brigades!

The corporate answer is they do not receive funding for large decent pumpers that not only have the pump capacity for moving large amounts of water at high pressure but are better platforms to work from for brigades that response to large amounts of structure, RCR or other incidents of an urban nature.

The current corporate model is to worry only about rural incidents which are left miles behind on the statistics of what a lot of brigades go to now days.

END OF RANT!

Wearing blue would not make us look like the MFS. Some people seem to think that green is the go so we don't look anything like the MFS. Wearing green makes us look like paramedics/ medical services which wear green around the world and I'm guessing will return to green here in South Australia in the near future.

Look globally fire services wear blue and the uniform would clearly have CFS marked on it.

I think it may be an insurance issue that everything is left on the appliance. I know when your personal car is involved in an accident the insurance company owns eveything and you have to write to them for permission to remove any part of the vehicle i.e. exhaust, alloy wheels etc.

It's funny how people bang on about the pro's and con's on single and twin rope rescue. I know for a fact if you are proficent at twin rope rescue it takes similar time to set up or slightly longer than single.

As for the extra expensive gadgets required that is a false statement.

The Queensland course offers both single and twin rope rescue.

As for your statements on "The Adelaide Hills Training Provider" that works for the MFS he is nationally and internationally respected and trains fire services, ambulance services,police and industrial emergency services all over the country and some overseas clients.

Maybe if some organisations used twin it would would mitigate the chance of falls because there is another contingency in place to prevent it!

Another bad week for Para Group, Tea Tree Gully had a car on fire with a fatality now Salisbury with a horrible train crash!

The problem more than likely lies between the funding the CFS obviously dont have (or there'd be more courses/ training / gear/ appliances you name it...) and legislation. More than that, we already have retained MFS stations, who do perform a very similar function to a paid CFS brigade style of response.

Perhaps extention, or MFS taking over some of the busier CFS stations and retaining current members if possible would take some of the pressure off the volunteer organisation, as well as removing some of the burden of costs for those brigades which do become retained MFS  from the CFS.

Blegh. Day shift brain, apologies if this looks like it's written, transcribed through Babelfish into German and back.

If MFS took over these busy CFS urban fringe or large rural centre brigades what is the benefit over a CFS retained or paid model. The benefit of CFS is that it could supply the urban response like MFS and also the rural response plus interact effectively with air support and AIIMS. Plus as i stated before these retained or paid CFS brigades could support the local volunteer brigades in a number of different ways. 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.

Eveyone keeps banging on abour budget yes it is a current concern but if the CFS model ever changes of cause we would need to change the funding structure. If CFS don't look down this path in a long term future analysis they will slowly get gobbled up by the MFS.

Quote from: pumprescue on November 07, 2009, 01:17:31 PM

Did you ever think maybe said brigade isn't needed, and only does 400 something stop calls from MFS, what a frustrating station to be involved with...."321 from SO BLAH BLAH INC 69, K66, CFS not required"..........I was also impressed with "I live 8 mins away in Elizabeth Park so I RACE to the station"...............

Also I think this gloss is kind of a media spin, the urban CFS brigades have always recruited fairly well, still doesn't help these stations in the country areas that are struggling big time....gotta love a media spin.

Pretty sure the article was about how many they have recruited, not how many stop calls salisbury get........most urban brigades go to 99% crap, but these are the brigades that make up the strike teams, without them CFS is in strife....

Good to see most of you lot have no idea what you're talking about quoting what urban fringe brigades go to and not. Having been at 2 urban fringe brigades over the years and a rural brigade. When urban fringe brigades get stop calls it is due to the first arriving appliance not requiring any additional assistance so they are generally not just stopping CFS but MFS as well and a lot of the time CFS has been responded as rescue and no extraction is required. Don't you put stop's through in the country when neighbouring bridages are not required?

Plus these urban fringe brigades back up MFS for EMA and COQ and respond into other CFS group area's assisting them and a lot of the time arrive to those incidents quicker as they can get out of their station quicker.

Also as stated they generally get strike teams together quicker and usually can supply 1 or 2 fire fighters after that fact for composite strike teams.

As for the arguement why is Salisbury still there in between two MFS stations you could argue that about a lot of urban fringe CFS stations. Why are there MFS retained stations in areas that do less calls than these stated urban fringe brigades? Why do we have CFS brigades that are lucky to do 50-60 calls a year not far from bridages that do 200+ that could just absorb there responsibillty with the same response time?

Ah because people like blue they want to be like the MFS, a little bit narrow minded one might say.

The reason they like blue is that it is generally associated with fire fighters uniforms being blue, green is usually associated with Ambulance services/ medical and I'm not talking about just little Adelaide.

Also there is no MFS envy (maybe a little truck envy) as stated as some are paid firies and the rest joke that fire services don't pay enough!

 

MFS: *CFSRES INC143 12/01/10 20:14,RESPOND VEHICLE RECOVERY,VERRALL RD,UPPER HERMITAGE MAP 74 D 14 TG098,ASSIST WITH HERMITAGE 34 TRUCK IN DANGER, OF TIPPING OVER AT BOTTOM OF ROAD,TTG020 TTGY19 CFS Tea Tree Gully Response

OOPS

Big oops apparently TTG CFS could not get there rescue appliance down to the location (remember Tuesday's heavy rain in the area) so SES had to secure Hermitage 34 in place with ropes till an excavator could assist with the recovery the next day. Thats their second oops rolled their 14 a few years ago!

Yeah but good luck finding someone in orange !! Also doesn't change the fact that the CFS rescue gear is on the SES rescue truck and that its always full of yellow people.

Well that follows my line of thought if SES in areas can't supply manning for rescue get rid of the SES appliances stow the rescue gear on a CFS or MFS retained appliance and the jobs done. Plus the attending Fire appliance in country areas (where crewing can be tight) has then got fire cover for the incident until the 2nd appliance arrives from the same brigade or the next brigade in another town.

Having paid CFS would not work,CFS seem to want to be the CFA, the CFA have a long history of paid staff and even now Victoria will see one fire service in the future. Maybe MFS need to adapt more to rural fire fighting and then there would be no need for paid CFS in these Urban/Rural settings? CFS have paid staff who as Rainer said outrank on shift fireman but have no fire operations training to be on shift fire fighters, i doubt most of them would pass the testing.

I'd like to see one fire service in this state in my own opinion as it would stop duplication of services at management, support and training levels or with staff from both services working along a common goal maybe it would introduce a better support structure both services currently seem to want. It may also resolve the current conflict with borders between the both services. It could also sort out the issue of having retained stations in areas that are not so busy and could revert back to volunteer and areas that are currently volunteer and are getting smashed in turn outs could become retained so the volunteers are not out of pocket for travel and lost time. Then once a retained station requires full-time staff that option could be looked at in a number of models.

As for CFS regional staff not having any fire operations training that statement is not truly correct as many paid staff instruct on courses so they have to be current to instruct on the given module and a lot of paid staff belong to brigades and respond with those brigades. As for the pay structure that is a not a huge issue all it requires is a restructure but would involve a budget increase (which seems to be an issue now!). As for most of them passing any formalised testing you could say that about a lot of white shirts in the MFS once these persons reach this level they truly don't need to be operational in the hose dragging sense as they are in a management/ command role so not a huge issue!

Why don't we have full time CFS stations?

The answer is that it would make sense that's why we do not do it.

The benefits would be that the paid CFS stations would have a better response time, be able to supply the community with an excellent urban/rural response. The stations could be strategically placed to benefit responses not only in there busy patch which it would have to be to support paid staff but they could also assist volunteer brigades nearby not just in response but all sorts of tasks.

Instead of handing area over to MFS and still requiring CFS in the area for rural response and like in many areas response for RCR and EMA. As we all know MFS have one big job and their resources are stretched (not their fault just the way the system is!).

I don't think the CFSVA is dead against the idea as for the UFU at the end of the day if this did get up a paid firie is another potential union member.

Plus think of the potential source of employee's the CFS could gather paid members from.