SA Firefighter

General Discussion => SA Firefighter General => Topic started by: Alex on May 12, 2010, 01:34:34 PM

Title: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Alex on May 12, 2010, 01:34:34 PM
Is it just me or is anyone else fed up with seeing single appliance responses to incidents? And im not talking about rubbish fires, tree downs, etc... Im talking about structure fires, alarm calls, vehicle fires and rescue not going to VAs.

Then when a brigade gets themselves turned out john wayne style, they more often than not end up hitting the more crew required button??

And before we all blame comms, lets remember 90% of CFS brigades get a phone call asking them who they want sent.

So why are we not following our own service SOPs, and common sense? Brigades doing this are only endangering the communities they clame to protect.
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Heavy Rescue on May 12, 2010, 04:17:02 PM
Yes that is an issue Alex. I can't understand how come the Regions sign off on the WFAM response plans with just one brigade on it, in some cases to A Class facilities. Seems like you are just asking for trouble.
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Alex on May 12, 2010, 06:13:09 PM
Mmmm good luck managing the evacuation of a hospital or nursing home with one appliance fellas!!!
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Robert-Robert34 on May 12, 2010, 09:05:28 PM
It depends on the area though Alex for example a tree over the road job is responded to by a brigade that has a chainsaw and chainsaw certified operators pending on the size of the tree more than 1 appliance is paged
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Alex on May 12, 2010, 09:43:31 PM
Robert if you re-read my post more carefully, ive said one appliance for tree downs is fine...

But one truck for a housefire or a fire alarm is not acceptable per CFS SOPs, so why is it allowed to continue. There not one off occurences, hardly a day goes by without a response to something somewhere not meeting SOP.
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: SA Firey on May 13, 2010, 08:32:15 AM
Robert if you re-read my post more carefully, ive said one appliance for tree downs is fine...

But one truck for a housefire or a fire alarm is not acceptable per CFS SOPs, so why is it allowed to continue. There not one off occurences, hardly a day goes by without a response to something somewhere not meeting SOP.

Im with you on this Alex, not to mention the amount of groups that send command cars to alarm calls, tree fires etc, so an appliance doesn't have to respond :-o

The minimum response is a 2.4 appliance with a minimum of 3 crew as per OMG 45 :wink:
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Darren on May 13, 2010, 10:54:57 AM
I know myself Alex on alerts calls you practically have to beg a response let alone a correct response.

Regions need to enforce SOP's, most let them slide, but in the end someone will pay for it, most likely the victim.

I think the more crew button is the single most used button, people seem reluctant to resource job's properly from the start, and reluctant to default if they have no crew.

There seems to be to much fear from the paid staff to tell the vols to go by the SOP's. Do they not realise that in the end the staff wear the penalties!
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Mike on May 13, 2010, 12:45:37 PM
Quote
There seems to be to much fear from the paid staff to tell the vols to go by the SOP's. Do they not realise that in the end the staff wear the penalties!

Let alone to much fear from the vollies, that their brigade will be seen in a bad light if they do default.....
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Zippy on May 13, 2010, 01:13:12 PM
mmmm defaulting isnt a bad thing...infact its a positive thing...as the action taken ensures an appropriate response still is occuring...
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: bittenyakka on May 13, 2010, 02:06:26 PM
I'll admit taht my brigade has been somewhat guilty of this at times. For you MFS guys Can;t you say Sorry taht response does not fir the SOP you need to do this or this ? in the end it doesn;t take much for you to page another truck.

what do staff wear more blame for sending non SOP response or tellign volllies to follow SOP?
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: BundyBear on May 14, 2010, 11:10:15 AM
All  rubbish aside the buck stops at the Captain, Lieutenants or the most senior brigade member at the time the pager drops and should be managed better by Group Officers and give them more power to do so...

1. The issues are brigades not defaulting when they should.
2. Responding with inadequate crews on appliances for the given incident.
3. Putting stops on brigades from other neighbouring stations or groups before they have fully assessed the incident.
4. Poorly written Group response plans that rely to heavily on that groups resources when sometimes other group resources are closer and more practical and should be included.

[/quote]

I'm with you on this Alex, not to mention the amount of groups that send command cars to alarm calls, tree fires etc, so an appliance doesn't have to respond :-o


[/quote]

Group cars to alarm calls so appliances don't have to move I've heard of rumours like that, does nothing for others services and the public accepting us as professional.

Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: 6739264 on May 15, 2010, 11:51:06 AM
Isn't the best way to solve a problem such as this, which is occurring state wide on a regular basis, is merely to take control AWAY from the local brigades?

I understand that we are still waiting for the all encompassing, gods gift to CRD - SACAD (but hell, we've been waiting for that since '86) but really, give the control to comms.

Multiple calls? Comms can upgrade the response. No appliance booked mobile in 4/6min? Comms turns out the next brigade. The current system does not allow this, and is frankly bullshit.

The problem at the moment is with comms, not the operators, but the system and the way it functions.

I do still agree that regions and groups should be all over brigades that don't follow SOP's, but what can you do when there are groups out there running their own show?

Oh and before I forget... more than one appliance to a Vehicle Fire? C'MON GUYS... Learn to fight fire!
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: rescue5271 on May 15, 2010, 04:40:54 PM
SACAD will not fix all problems, The problem is state wide and needs to be fixed only way to fix things is to fill in the paperwork and send it up the ladder.As for Adealide fire calling alerts ye right it only happens if there not busy....
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: tft on May 15, 2010, 06:06:41 PM
SACAD is a joke, what have they done!
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: bittenyakka on May 16, 2010, 09:26:43 AM
than one appliance to a Vehicle Fire? C'MON GUYS... Learn to fight fire!

I assume you are talking about fighting the fire rather than the response SOP? if so yea i agree
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: BundyBear on May 16, 2010, 02:47:11 PM
than one appliance to a Vehicle Fire? C'MON GUYS... Learn to fight fire!

I assume you are talking about fighting the fire rather than the response SOP? if so yea i agree

One appliance can extinguish a car fire granted but you have to look at the overall risk. I feel it is a 2 appliance response and you can easily stop a resource if not required. Examples- Stolen vehicle burning on the side of the road during summer, say no more. Vehicle on fire in an urban setting under or next to buildings. Vehicles on LPG requiring the cylinder to be cooled.
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Alex on May 16, 2010, 04:03:27 PM

Oh and before I forget... more than one appliance to a Vehicle Fire? C'MON GUYS... Learn to fight fire!

All well and good mate, just remember some brigades cant get the truck out the door or BA wearers, hence paging one brigade by itself is still rubbish.
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: rescue5271 on May 16, 2010, 05:22:18 PM
People need to look at briagde and group response plans and read what it say for each risk having said that looks at SOP'S and if its still not right fill in the paperwork and send it up the line...mind you its hard to have any sort of plan if those in Adealide fire dont follow CFS SOP'S.....
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Alex on May 16, 2010, 06:15:55 PM
People need to look at briagde and group response plans and read what it say for each risk having said that looks at SOP'S and if its still not right fill in the paperwork and send it up the line...mind you its hard to have any sort of plan if those in Adealide fire dont follow CFS SOP'S.....

Geez Bill, you certainly seem to hate Adelaide Fire dont ya? Remember, theyre not there to enforce CFS SOP. They are there to respond brigades as specified by either BOMS data, or vollies on ALERTS.

Adelaide Fire is not the problem [and i say that without bias].

The problem is vollunteers on ALERTS trying to keep jobs to themselves for unknown reasons and slack regions not kicking filtered.
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: rescue5271 on May 16, 2010, 08:42:20 PM
Alex i did not say I hate Adelaide fire, If we are going to have all these problems fixed by 2011 when SACAD is ment to come online then we all need to make sure we follow all information that is in the PC.. As for alerts well then those in the city should follow the rules and call it when they dont ahve any information on the PC about a area........
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Alex on May 16, 2010, 09:08:40 PM
Bill, you make multiple comments in differant threads, always bagging. And you seem to have no real idea... "follow all the information in the PC".... what information? CFS state & region never supplied data when the CRD transition happened, hence the ALERTS calls and the ridiculous responses when joe the farmer thinks one truck to a grassie is fine on a TFB. And all AFAs were signed off by regions... yep one brigade to a hospital or nursing home? She'll be right!

Thats probably enough from me, because this is being pulled away from my initial gripe as a CFS vollie, seeing my own service acting completely unprofesionally... but i'd love to know where you get your info from Bill as you obviously have no idea what systems are being used and what information CFS provides.
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: rescue5271 on May 17, 2010, 07:02:42 AM
Alex, I think you need to go back and look into where you got your information as some not all regions have given information for the transition over to CRD. I am well aware of what systems CFS use. It is true that some brigades/groups only turn out one brigade to a job but that one brigade may have 2 or 3 appliances in the one station. If we where to turn out a second station to every fixed alarm we had in my group it would not take long for the rural brigades to get pissed off. Keep in mind that some brigades in the country are about 20 to 30 mins apart not like in the city where there every 10kms or closer.....

Will SACAD fix this problem ??
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: CFS_Firey on May 17, 2010, 11:29:07 AM
Is it just me or is anyone else fed up with seeing single appliance responses to incidents?

...

So why are we not following our own service SOPs, and common sense? Brigades doing this are only endangering the communities they clame to protect.

Back to the original topic....

While I agree that we should be following SOPs and playing it safe for our community, we also need to remember that many brigades are struggling for volunteers and crews, so we don't want to burden them unnecessarily. You know, the boy that cried wolf etc. etc.

Playing devil's advocate here...  If a nursing home's alarm goes off every week, and it's always a false alarm, is it really better for the community to take 12 people away from their jobs or families to go and reset it when you could achieve the same with a crew of 4?

It's true you can always stop extra resources, but is it worth the cost on volunteers?  Maybe it is, but I'm guessing a lot of brigades have decided it isn't...

Baring in mind I come from a group that goes to the other extreme and responds a thousand appliances to anything, so I might have it all wrong...
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Darren on May 17, 2010, 11:47:08 AM
Adelaide fire has no power at all to enforce SOP's for the CFS or SES.

Alerts isn't always the answer, often not answered or get a bunch of non CFS members who don't know the first thing about response plans.

A lot of brigade that only have the single station response have a number of brigades around them.

The stuff you hear on the radio in some areas is enough to make you want to reach down the radio and strangle some of these damn red hats. I don't even want to call it dad's army, at least Captain Mainwaring followed some sort of quidelines....even as recently as a few days ago something I heard from the south east made me turn white with shock then red with anger.

But I guess nothing will change when there are no consequences for people's actions.....poor volly, was only trying his best  :roll:
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Heavy Rescue on May 17, 2010, 01:39:06 PM
A mate of mine was in a brigade in a fairly well known grape growing district, one job he told me about was at a call to a fire alarm at the local hospital.

He was the only one to respond to the station so he rang the Group Officer to confirm that another brigade was being responded. The Group Officer's response was to tell him to take a drive in his own vehicle out to the job and reset the panel. This was when my mate was new to the CFS and didn't know any better. Scary to think that this was only a year or so ago.

Thankfully there has been a significant change in personnel in that Group and things are starting to slowly improve.
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Darren on May 17, 2010, 01:53:47 PM
I think this is where a lot of problems stem from, you have some "good ol boys" in charge of groups who pretty much do what they like with no come backs. So those "good ol boys" teach the brigades bad habits, so when a young bloke like that gets told to do something he knows no better, and learns that its ok to do that.

Until these "good ol boys" get hauled over the coals then it will continue to happen.

Sorry, I forgot, can't upset the volunteers.
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Zippy on May 17, 2010, 02:45:28 PM
Political correctness vs the safety of those in that hospital?
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: rescue5271 on May 17, 2010, 03:01:37 PM
Darren, you are so correct and Heavey rescue it happens at lots of jobs....change is good at group and brigade level....
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: SA Firey on May 17, 2010, 05:11:43 PM
A mate of mine was in a brigade in a fairly well known grape growing district, one job he told me about was at a call to a fire alarm at the local hospital.

He was the only one to respond to the station so he rang the Group Officer to confirm that another brigade was being responded. The Group Officer's response was to tell him to take a drive in his own vehicle out to the job and reset the panel. This was when my mate was new to the CFS and didn't know any better. Scary to think that this was only a year or so ago.

Thankfully there has been a significant change in personnel in that Group and things are starting to slowly improve.

It's interesting as another story told from up that very region, is a fixed alarm goes off and the primary brigade is short on crew, whereas the brigade they defaulted to had a full compliment of BA operators and crew, get told to respond to the station to do the radio while they go to the job with less crew than them :? :-o
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: BundyBear on May 17, 2010, 10:45:23 PM
I think this is where a lot of problems stem from, you have some "good ol boys" in charge of groups who pretty much do what they like with no come backs. So those "good ol boys" teach the brigades bad habits, so when a young bloke like that gets told to do something he knows no better, and learns that its ok to do that.

Until these "good ol boys" get hauled over the coals then it will continue to happen.

Sorry, I forgot, can't upset the volunteers.

This is one of the biggest items that cripples the CFS and holds it back in advancement and prevents correct succession planning within a lot of brigades.

The cavalier attitude towards response plans, tribalism (my Brigade/Group must respond) or the lack of realisation that the CFS is more than just a “bush fire brigade” needs to be weeded out of the system. If not it permeates down through the brigade into up and coming rank holders and can be very detrimental to brigades growth as an effective emergency service.

One of the problems is most CFS fire fighters begin and end their fire fighting at the one station so they’re limited in their exposure to how other brigades operate and don’t have the ability to objectively assess their own brigades performance.

This attitude also causes a poor attitude to training where you see a lot of these brigades if they are responded to more than a grass fire they are readily out of their depth. This is due to the fact the current leaders will stay in their comfort zone in regards to training and operational preparedness and barely graze the surface on such disciplines as structural fire fighting, road accident rescue or hazmat and you’ll hear the age old cry “We don’t do that so we don’t need to know!” If you have the chance or the offer go train with another busier brigade or one that may be hazmat, rescue or have CABA and your brigade does not you will pick up a lot.

The answer will never be easy but if you have these issues in your Group or Brigade you must act by pointing out these issues in a constructive way in debriefs etc or it will turn around and eventually bite your brigade you know where.


Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Alex on May 17, 2010, 11:00:57 PM
One of the problems is most CFS fire fighters begin and end their fire fighting at the one station so they’re limited in their exposure to how other brigades operate and don’t have the ability to objectively assess their own brigades performance.

Exactly!! Good point.
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: Alex on May 17, 2010, 11:07:52 PM

While I agree that we should be following SOPs and playing it safe for our community, we also need to remember that many brigades are struggling for volunteers and crews, so we don't want to burden them unnecessarily. You know, the boy that cried wolf etc. etc.

Yeah.. i'd much rather keep a few brigades quiet and happy, than service the community properly.

WE'RE A FIRE SERVICE NOT A SOCIAL CLUB!
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: CFS_Firey on May 18, 2010, 12:32:13 PM
WE'RE A FIRE SERVICE NOT A SOCIAL CLUB!

Couldn't agree more!

..but we're also a fire service that is struggling with low membership, poor training, low morale and next to no funding.  If we don't keep the members we have happy, it's going to be even worse for the community.

If someone can only have an hour away from work per week to attend fire calls, would you rather they used that up coming to an alarm call, or helping out at a cranking structure fire that needs all hands?

(By the way, I'm not saying we shouldn't send 2 appliances to all alarm calls, I'm saying the brigades that don't may have good reasons not to).
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: whitecloud on May 18, 2010, 06:43:47 PM
A lot of strong points. Tribalism and a lack of good rapport between neighbouring brigades certainly hamper the communities involved. A couple of the larger hills brigades for example have members who have done little else with their lives than spend time in CFS, and are quite happy to foster this poor attitude, as well as an inability to ask for adequate assistance in newer brigade members. As Darren said, poor example begets poor experience for recruits.

It will be interesting when SACAD comes in. Accountability for stupid decisions, rather than the curtain excuse of 'just a volunteer with poor training' would go a long, long way.
Title: Re: Minimum Response Standards.
Post by: bajdas on May 18, 2010, 08:40:57 PM
....
It will be interesting when SACAD comes in. Accountability for stupid decisions, rather than the curtain excuse of 'just a volunteer with poor training' would go a long, long way.

But who is going to hold them accountable ? SACAD might provide the information & facts about a incident response, but someone has to do something with that data. SACAD wont.