SA Firefighter

Back on subject, here's an interesting one I spotted tonite!


call out naked lady needs rescuing 10/03/2006 9:46:08 PMk

Who gets to be the lucky service

I've noticed in previous postings comments regarding wearing of seatbelts in private vehicles all the time, but not in a fire appliance.

Well, I'm guilty as well!

MFS does stipulate that they must be worn, but I haven't noticed too many people in Metro or Country doing it.

Our front running appliance (Scania) does have BA seats and if you have put a BA on, the shoulder straps alone would probably restrain you if you hadn't pushed down on the lever to release the set.

All BA seats do have retracting seatbelts, but crews find putting them on with an airset a bit of a tangle.

I suppose if anything happened and you were't wearing one, it could be detrimental to an injury payout, but who knows...........

The only information that we know about is what has been officially released in the media, and it was that there would one fulltime crew for one appliance for a day shift (0800-1700 hrs?) with retained backup.

All Weekends and 1700-0800 hrs? weekdays would be retained crew.

So still quite different from Pt. Pirie which has fulltime crews 24/7 for one appliance with retained backup.

Still doesn't come close to solving retained crew fatigue levels!

Regards, Mat

Well, here we go, these are my views as a member of the Mount Gambier retained crew interested in changing to full-time!

First of all, many of us that are looking at changing from retained (permanent part time) to a fulltime position have been with the service for many years (13 in my case)

Looking at it from my point of view, if you are doing the job now 24/7 successfully with all the necessary training qualifications and real on the job experience, and all that is changing is that you would start a day shift at 0730 and finish at 1700 hrs then why shouldn't our local retained crews be allowed to transfer directly over to fulltime positions in our own station.

It is now a common occurrence that other government and private industries will allow permanent part time employees to change to full time positions with little or no change, so why the difference here!

All our crew are asking for is really a fair go........
Not too much to ask for really, after all the hard work and dedication that our crews put into the station to serve our community faithfully!!

Regards, Mat

Slightly off track, but I have noticed more of the dual cab appliances (e.g. 34p's and 24p's) in the CFS fleet.Is there procedures regarding responding to incident in vehicle cabin before changing over to firefighting deck on arrival?
I would think that a crew would be much safer in the instance of the unfortunate accident of the Murray Bridge Pumper if they were in the actual cabin of an appliance than the "shelter" at the front of the firefighting deck.

I also wish a speedy recovery to the crew involved and hope they are "back on the horse" soon!

Regards, Mat.

G,day Everyone,

My name is Mathew, I am 30 years of age, married with a 8 month old daughter, work fulltime doing auto electrical work/cabling and also are a Retained Senior Firefighter with the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service in Mount Gambier.

Our station(70), has four fire appliances (Scania Large Pumper, Isuzu Mid Urban Pumper, Isuzu 14 Pumper and an antique Skyjet )      Mount Gambier is one of Regional Operations busiest stations with calls usually 450-500 year

I first started a role in Emergency Services back when I was still at school, at the age of 15 with the State Emergency Service.
I became more interested in the diverse role that the Fire Services play and joined SAMFS in early 1993 and have been there since (with a 6 month break for work change)

With this time in the service, I have seen many changes in equipment and PPE and have completed pretty much all the nessesary courses that are offered 2-3 times or more and have attended probably several thousand calls ranging from domestic and commercial fires, grass and rubbish fires, HAZMAT incidents, RCR incidents and anything else that is thrown at us!

I believe that being a Firefighter, would have to be one of the best jobs you could think of, whether your a volunteer,paid or somewhere in between. Nothing beats the satisfaction of helping others in need when the "crap hits the fan"
The fact that every job is so different to the next, is what makes it so much better than the usual mundane repetitive workplace that most of us would work in!

Anyway, that's enough from me, I look forward to reading other intro's from eveyone else!!!