SA Firefighter

John, spend five minutes looking back through the thread and you will see what some of our concerns were.

We had multiple instances where the person on the other end of the phone took a couple of minutes to try and interpret what we were trying to do, even though they had a script in front of them with drop down fields, they still stuffed it up. When you aim to be on the road in four minutes, a delay of two minutes at the station waiting for someone who is on the phone is definitely an issue for my 'Chardonnay' brigade.

We also witnessed delays of up to twenty minutes from the time we spoke to the operator until the time the message was actually sent on the network, possibly not ideal...

My biggest problem was the fact that we were not speaking with Adelaide Fire, and therefore were unable to get any further information about the job. Quite often between the time the initial page is sent, and the couple of minutes later when we ring in to acknowledge more information is available, and our guys routinely ask. It might be just as simple as the operator saying we are getting multiple calls, or we've had a call from the premises and they are telling us it is burnt toast, this can make a difference to the thought process of our 'Chardonnay' officers.

If the system works for your brigade that is excellent, because it means that for brigades like mine that prefer to speak to a real life fire service comcen operator they will have a better chance, because your brigade will be speaking to a Link Paging operator in Jakarta.

What's your next suggestion.....carrier pigeons???

Well if the services insist on removing the ability to be able to speak with Adelaide Fire, I would suggest using one of the buttons on the Alpha OAD and programming it to send an acknowledgment message. But lets hope it doesn't get to that because that too could have its own issues.

It appears that many brigades haven't realised the trial finished two weeks ago, lots of people still calling in on this system.

I've noticed the SAAS pager messags have now taken off the Created time stamp. Some of the fall out from Crystal Brook perhaps??

Quite possibly, although their response was that it was straight forward operator error, and had nothing at all to do with the CAD.

The event codes and dispatch priority list is available on the www.sascan.net.au website.

So what sort of gear are brigades interested inbuying out of their own funds?

And what have you been told you cannot purchase ?

I know some of the rescue brigades would have bought plenty of operational gear to supplement what the service supplies.

My own brigade has purchased plenty of gear from fundraised money, and if we hadn't then we wouldn't have got it through the usual budgetry process.

I agree with the argument amount propping up a poorly funded service, but the reality is that we don't have a lot of choice. Unless the Chief gets the extra $10m he is asking for not a lot is going to change.

Some of the gear we have purchased throughout the years include;

Recipriocating saw / Battery drill kit (about 10 years before the service started supplying them)
PPV fans
Chainsaws
Haligan Tools (proper forcible entry one piece steel ones, not those cheap ones the CFS supply)
AED's
O2 kits
Lighting / Generators
Fridges for our appliances
AC Hot sticks
TFT / Akron branches
Plantation gear

That's just a few things that we use regularly at jobs (well maybe not the AED but you get the idea).

If we had to wait for the organisation to supply all that gear we would never get it. Yes we are fortunate that we can do a lot of fundraising and have the personnel to support it, and I do feel for the rural brigades that don't have that opportunity but still need the gear.

Unfortunately the reality is the CFS only has a limited budget, some of it goes to equipment, some goes to training, some goes to buildings, some goes to prevention and a big chunk of it goes to wages. If you want to put more into equipment you either have to take it away from somewhere else or get more from the Government, good luck either way.

It's also not just equipment that fundraised money is used for. Our brigade dinners, christmas days and family events are all paid for out of our fundraised money. Do you think the CFS is going to give us $1000 for our Christmas day - no way, but without some of these fun events to keep the volunteers and their families enjoying themselves no one is going to stick around too long. It's about doing what is right, and for us a bit of fundraising to pay for some of our larger events is worth it to keep everyone coming back at 3am for a fixed alarm.

The ultimate solution is a bigger budget, in the mean time my brigade will continue to fundraise and purchase equipment that we know is going to make our jobs safer and easier.

Don't worry, my feedback has been passed up the chain.

Today's effort was pretty good, 20 minutes from the time the call was made until the time the page was sent. Not to mention the time wasted waiting for them to answer the phone, and then having to spell names three times for them to get it right.

We gave up waiting for someone to answer last night, this was at 3am, obviously all the operators disappear after hours.

Also yesterday we became the Northvale brigade, not bad considering I was under the impression they had a drop down list of brigades to choose from.

Then this morning it took them 15 mins to send the page to Adelaide Fire. We had put a stop back on the job by the time my brigade and another brigades acknowledgment page had been sent.

I could go on but I probably don't need to, my feedback has all been passed up the chain of command to be reviewed as part of the trial.

Probably in relation to the trial of the new pager acknowledgment procedure, a few CFS, SES and retained MFS stations are trialing it starting on Monday (15th). Basically acknowledging the page with link paging, who will then page Adelaide Fire with the name of the brigade and the person that called. A message then pops up on their screen with the details.

Will mean that many more operators are able to take the calls than currently exists in Adelaide Fire, one of the problems on a big day (and sometimes not even a big day) is that you can't through to acknowledge.

Pics of medium Pump for NZ, same as CFS and a newstory about the CFS one from Frasers

The CFS model has the 750GPM pump and four outlets, the NZFS appliance only has three outlets and a 500GPM pump, I think there is a few other subtle differences as well.

Isn't it going to Morphett Vale?

Looks like the name on the side of the truck has been covered up.

He seemed fairly uninspired by our nineteen year old 24 Al. I explained that it was it our 2nd out the door for an urban fire in our area and he said something like "but it's only got a 300GPM pump on it, you need at least a 500GPM for any urban stuff" so at least he understands the shortfalls of our equipment.

I invited him to attend our brigade and he spoke to us all for a few hours on where he came from and his intentions for the service.

He did make the point a number of times that he believes the service has focussed too much on rural stuff recently, and he is going to now focus more on rescue and urban firefighting.

Send him an invite Mr T, you might be surprised.

I believe the job was called into SAMFS first, not sure why but they also passed it on to SAAS who responded on a cat C.