SA Firefighter

Heard a funny dummy spit this morning by South Coast SES to Adelaide Fire complaining why have Victor MFS been responded to "their" jobs as well and when they (SES) turn up there's nothing to be done.  He said they have wasted an hour this morning doing this.  The Adelaide Fire guy replied that that's the system and he should ring them and speak to a supervisor.

Frankly I'm surprised it seems to have taken someone in the SES this long to notice their time is being constantly wasted.  The SES are responded with different job numbers to CFS/MFS but to the same job, different talkgroups, and each service isn't told the other has also been responded.  Adelaide Fire, who should know who has been responded, don't pass on stop calls or sitreps from the first service to attend to any others. 

I have sympathy for the SES volunteers being mucked around like this and think the SES management have a lot to answer for.  I also think it's about time the SES management realised they are not an emergency service (there are so many examples why this is the case, eg. response pages in some cases just go to a single staff members pager and they chase up people via phone, sending someone out to recce things first before responding, units that respond 30mins, 1hr, 3hrs whatever later, and so on, all these mean it can't be an "emergency"), that doesn't mean the service they provide isn't valuable of course, just not an "emergency".  Unfortunately there's too much vested interest, it needs the safecom chief to smack some sense into them.

I think the CFS seem to be rather over-doing it with the public warning messages lately.  Pretty soon we'll hit the 'cry wolf' level and then we'll need another more extreme sounding name for it to try to get people's attention again.

eg. today they (Region 1 in this case) issued a "watch and act" message for Wistow "ignition development" at 14:39 when actually it was an hour earlier that the fire was first reported, and in fact at 14:39 was well after the fire had been declared contained.  They then issued another WAM of "reduced threat" at 15:15.

I am forwading this from a work colleague as I know there are a few CFS volunteers around who are in the security industry and have contacts therein.  If you can help please contact Ken at "[email protected]".
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If you work in Security, or know someone who does, please take a few seconds to read this posting, and pass it on as appropriate.
 
I am involved with a fund-raising concert for the Mt Pleasant CFS, scheduled to take place on Saturday May 16th.
We have organised 5 bands, PA, lighting, staging, and a venue, but cannot currently proceed with the event due to a security requirement. Hiring the required 7 security personnel from an agency would cost us around $4000, which could easily consume all the profits. We currently have no volunteers.
 
So, if you are a licensed security officer, and would consider volunteering some of your time, or know someone who may be interested, please let me know. You will get to hear some excellent bands, and have the satisfaction of helping the CFS update some of their outdated and unreliable equipment.

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?

Do you think there is value in a website showing all (CFS) pager messages?  Do you think it causes more problems/trouble than it is worth? 

What about if there was such a site but only for authorised people (eg. it was by verified login/membership), would that be any better?

My opinion is it can be very useful sometimes (especially during the fire season to get advance warning of developing incidents and help counter the severe lack of useful info coming from HQ/regions) but it can also cause problems when idiots run off half-cocked based on something they've seen on there that is not their concern.

(I know anyone with a slight bit of knowledge can set up their own decoder and see all pages, but if everyone had to go to that much effort it would severely reduce the number of people who can see them compared to anyone being able to look at a website)

saw this on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/1933-Dodge-Fire-Truck_W0QQitemZ250226970473QQihZ015QQ

current station

or rather the site anyway, as of last weekend.

Interesting article in this weeks Courier (Adelaide Hills newspaper) about problems at the Adelaide Hills SES unit (they don't seem to have updated their website yet so can't post a link to it: http://www.courier.net.au).  Now being the media I am cautious as to how much is correct (although the Courier are usually one of the better ones) but....

I found it interesting the ex unit manager's (David Chatwin) comment that they seem to be a glorified gardening service (referring to the number of trees down calls) rather than a real rescue service.  I think he's quite right (as an outsider to the SES) but that seems to be what the SES heirarchy want.

Also interesting to hear the reason for his suspension (and reinstatement) was his failing to submit paperwork as a protest.  What top people management skills shown by the SES big knobs.

Quote from: 5271rescue on October 22, 2006, 09:06:39 PM

Why not pick up the mobile phone in your appliance?

not all appliances have mobiles do they?? - I know our 2 dont

you'd better get some them, a mobile phone in an appliance is the backup to the GRN radio (now we have no VHF repeaters or VHF in stations).

when I click "show all unread posts since last visit" and it says there are none, so then I click on the option to "click here to try all unread topics", the link is:
http://www.safirefighter.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=53&action=unread;all;start=0
however clicking it takes me to a page that says there are "no messages...".

well it's a slow afternoon but had an alerts call earlier and it got me thinking it would be handy to have alerts calls come up on my mobile with a different ringtone, preferably something fire-related (eg. like a siren or something).

previous attempts of mine to find and download a decent ringtone off the net have been a total waste of time, has anyone got any? or good places to look?