SA Firefighter

I found this little gem in today's edition of the Occupational Health & Safety Daily News: Thinking we should forward it onto our own opposition leader!

MELBOURNE: Better safety gear for volunteers, new Country Fire Authority (CFA) stations and 100 new firefighting vehicles are at the centre of a $136 million plan by the Coalition. Victorian Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu has announced the multi-million dollar package that includes $36 million to upgrade and build more than 60 CFA and SES stations. Mr Baillieu said no new sites had been selected but he expected new stations to be built in areas of population growth. About 100 new tankers, pumper trucks and support vehicles, all equipped with GPS, will cost $25 million. Another $36.4 million has also been committed to new personal protective uniforms for firefighters, with a further $18 million for better training facilities and 2,000 new pagers.

Noticed that Pinnaroo's 16 (QAV) was back at Moores this week and has had a half width crew deck fitted to the drivers side.

Have since found what I was looking for, the Standard Stowage lists have a disclaimer at the top of the page which states the fully equipped appliance including crew (@90kg ea) must not exceed 95% of the vehicles GVM.

Thanks to those who replied, much appreciated.

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Would be interested to see a similar build on a new Turbo'd Canter or Izusu NPR

The closest design that I have seen would the twin cab "ROSA" build from Moores.

Has anyone heard if CFS are intending to build any more 14's and by that I mean real one's that can carry at least 1000lt plus some reasonable stowage. I cam across some interesting articles the other day on the latest Canter, made interesting reading... refer links:

www.fuso.com.au/Docs/Website/Product/Articles/UtesVansDrivesCanter4WD.pdf
www.fuso.com.au/Docs/Website/Product/Articles/FUSO_4pager.pdf

On the subject of 14's any news of how Eden Hills 14 is progressing?. Cheers

When I referred to size it wasn't speed that i was concerned with but what Alan J just mentioned, we have streets here that if two cars are parked either side, there is no way through without "repositioning " one of them.

Reading today's Advertiser's "carsguide" it has an article on the new Canter range. They are now releasing a crew cab with a GVM of 7.5 tonne auto (2x4) A  new engine mated to a Auto trans, 130Kw & 530Nm which they say is an increase of 14% pwr & 26% Tq over the Isuzu N series and 18% pwr & 36% Tq over the Hino 300. The question is are these figures capable of driving a 500gpm - 750gpm pump, carry 1000lt, sufficient hose and 4 BA.

As a comparison, Isuzu FTS 800 figures are 176Kw & 706Nm, 13,500 Kg GVM
                  Isuzu NPS 300 figures are 114Kw & 419Nm, 6000Kg GVM
                  Previous Canter figures were 110Kw & 471Nm, 6000Kg GVM

                     

On the drive down the hill we were tiring to workout the last time a Bridgewater appliance had parked in Stn 20 on COQ, we believe it would have been around the early 1980's and that time we were driving and "Acco".

Certainly was interesting to spend some time looking at how the other side operate. At around 0100, we along with Barker and Aldgate were responded to the Kilburn fire, reading some of the comments here, it really didn't make a difference as to what type of appliance you were on as long as it carried BA and you had operators available. Our trucks were only used for transport.

We were tasked with dealing with any hot-spots amongst piles of molten plastic, working off Blackwood CAFS that was being fed water from Angle Park.

Overall an interesting but tiring experience. Cheers

Thanks Matt for taking the time to put this report together, certainly an interesting read.

Cheers

A very interesting article was in the Weekend Australian, titled "Get Ready For the Big One" I have inserted the link to the full article for those that may not have seen Sat's paper. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25148472-28737,00.html

The comments in regard to volunteers I thought were right on the mark.
 
..."We have to recognise that a lot of our response and recovery effort is reliant on volunteers and the nongovernmental sector. The overall cost if we had to fully fund our emergency management volunteer effort -- if we had to pay the volunteers, including overheads -- is in the order of $12 billion a year. There are more than 500,000 emergency management volunteers in Australia. They are predominantly male, average age 47, with very few from Asian, eastern European, Middle Eastern or indigenous backgrounds.

How we nurture and maintain this volunteer workforce will be a substantial challenge. Volunteers don't want to be paid. But we should be addressing volunteer costs in meeting training standards. This could be considered on a cost-share basis between the commonwealth and jurisdictions. The average cost is about $500 a year for each active volunteer member. The total cost of such an initiative would be about $150 million a year.

We need a national strategy for emergency volunteers similar to Defence Department support for employers and self-employed reservists whereby employers qualify for financial compensation if they face difficulties in releasing employees to undertake reserve duty. Given the regular deployments of emergency volunteers in support of community safety, often performed in urgent and dangerous circumstances as we saw in the Victorian bushfires, there's a strong case that similar support should be made available for the employers of our emergency volunteers.

The investment for future emergency management capability for Australia lies in volunteerism, retaining and maintaining the 500,000 Australians who make this sacrifice.

The idea from last year's 2020 summit to allow students to reduce their HECS debt with voluntary work should be treated with caution, however. It would be a bureaucratic nightmare to administer and risks producing volunteers who aren't committed. Managing volunteers is no different from managing career staff: training, supervision, indemnity insurance and police-check requirements are the same. You just can't plug in the average 20-year-old university student into a make-work scenario.

A more cost-effective strategy would be to transfer the money that would go on HECS discounts directly to the voluntary sector".

Another method for ensuring manpower / skills are available for emergency situations is what some other countries are doing. I know Singapore have National Service which includes service to the Fire. Police, Ambulance along with the military. This obviously would cost money, but if instigated for a 12 month period between high school and Uni would provide stable work force.

Open to comments (flak jacket secured)

Hi Bitten,
In regard to the CFA Staging area the following comments come to mind;
a.  Well laid out
b.  Portable coolrooms provided for boxes of drinking water and sports drinks
c.  2 x 20' containers filled with equipment to hand out i.e camel packs, personal first aid kits, gloves, hats, safety glasses, respirators etc, etc.
d.  Excelent food with good size survings (had use of uni campus cafe areas)
e.  Excelent briefing room (Uni Lecture Hall)

In regards to the CFA Appliances
a.  Newer dual cab Hino's were pretty good,but have a huge turning circle.
(wouldn't let us alone on Grange Tanker  lattest build complete with mini monitor on bull-bar)
b.  They don't use 25mm layflat, thus we dragged 38mm 
c.  There live reels are only 20m at best with a TB15 fitted (first thing we all did was swap it with the TFT that they kept in the locker)
d.  They didn't have UHF sets to use on the appliances for use on the fireground They may have been removed, not sure.

Thats is about all i can think of at the moment.
e.  They have a special foam aplicator branch that works realy well
e.  Older appliances didn't have burn-over curtains on the crew decks

Quote from: Darcyq on February 08, 2009, 11:54:30 AM

I have just recieved the nod to say I'm going. No trucks, just crews flying over tonight.

cya there Darcy....u bring the bat, I'll bring the ball 

Lets just hope their is not too much of the "hurry up and wait" 

bahahahahaha 1 ha burnt...talk about a traffic jam. end of augment about over resourcing. 

Interesting article in this weeks Courier...


The Courier Opinion

Thursday, January 22, 2009
Timely fire warning
As far as fire seasons go, the Hills is at the pointy end of this one.
The temperatures are picking up, and so are the winds, and the
forecasters are predicting plenty of hot and gusty conditions in
coming weeks.
Water restrictions are biting household gardens and it's becoming
harder to find lush green shelter belts around homes.
Two fires this week showed how quickly a spark can catch hold in dry
vegetation and threaten homes.
One in Bridgewater was ignited by an angle grinder and burnt through
the front yards of two homes and jumped the road to burn sections of
the front yards of another three houses.
The other fire was the fault of a spark from a passing train that
raced through a well kept buffer belt of slashed grass to burn out
the backyard of one house and threaten several others.
In a matter of minutes a tiny flame erupted into something monstrous
and it took a hard and fast response from the CFS to stop it in its
tracks.
Notably it took carefully aimed loads of foam mixture from two water
bombers to take the sting out of the fires so volunteers could get
close enough to finish them off.
One neighbor told The Courier he was amazed when one drop effectively
put out half the fire and significantly reduced the radiant heat
beating down the street.
Water bombers are proving to be invaluable firefighting tools,
helping communities contain damage and save assets.
In steep terrain, as evident at the Bridgewater fire, aerial attacks
can mean the difference between a small incident and a big fire out
of the reach of ground crews.
But water bombers don't put out fires.
The Hills still rely on its CFS volunteers to manage the fire ground,
direct the bombers, put strategies in place and then hang around for
hours afterwards to black everything out and prevent flare-ups.
Fire is reported in the region most days now and every time their
pagers go off a group of people give up their time to keep the rest
of the community safe.
The least that community can do in return is to reduce the amount of
preventable fires happening, and be prepared themselves.
Don't use angle grinders, welders and cutting tools on total fire ban
days without a permit. It's illegal.
Think twice about mowing and slashing on high risk days, keep your
machinery in good condition and keep decent firefighting equipment
nearby if you have to use machinery and tools.
The Hills are tinder dry at the moment and it doesn't take much to
start a bushfire.
The Courier [Permanent link to this item] [Opinion home] [Courier home].

Don't know about you lot, but were in the business of protecting lives and saving property. Given the location of this fire their was a serious level of risk to exposures which included a number of homes and the edge of Engelbrook reserve that was directly opposite. Upgrading it early to a 2nd alarm was appropriate, then once a reassessment was made with the threat reduced, brigades were stood down quickly.

Given the fact that this is a public forum, it would be my advice to keep some of the "2nd guess type opinions to yourselves or pass any legitimate concerns up the official channels. This sort of banter does not do us any favours.

I was wondering if any other Brigades had been told / found out for themselves the affect that the this new regulation will have on drivers. It only effects trucks with a GVM of 12t and over, which would include most if not all 34/34p, pumpers.

Examples that came to mind are: (1)If I work a normal day shift (7 - 3.30)then later that afternoon I get paged at 5pm to respond with a strike team to a large grass,scrub fire that is 20km from our station. We spend 12 hrs on the fire ground before being stood down, under the new regs, I can not now drive home nor can any other driver who is in our crew. A vehicle from the station is then required to deliver another driver to the fireground to bring the truck/crew home.

(2) I am now a truck driver for my day job, I complete a normall shift of 9 hrs. Get a page that evening and put in 3.5 hrs at a fire. Under the regs I can drive to the fire as i can use the exemption seeing as it is a classified emergency, however, i can not drive home or return to my day job as a driver for another 12 hours.


I suppose I more curious as to why CFS has not raised this issue with the brigades, I only came across it by chance reading the Saturdays Advertiser, then last night at brigade, I spoke to one of our members who is a member of SAPOL and discussed it with him.

I believe the brigades also now are required to keep a drivers log, and all drivers are responsible for obtaining and holding a drivers diary. (filled out only if driving further than 100km radius of station) - strike team deployments

Further information at transport.sa.gov.au then follow link to "Heavy vehicle driver fatigue"