SA Firefighter

Hey - we were told before we left we had to wear at least the pants!!

Interesting...

I thought the comp was run through the VFBA and if so (in the climate of the time) no wonder noone saw it.

As an active VFBA committee person at the time I only heard of it after it had been decided.

Stuart Ellis was a long time supporter of the star which he personally preferred. He said to me at the time that the new logo was what the "vollies" (which I took to mean VFBA) wanted.

Maybe someone may remember what really happened??

Welcome Anne.

There are many things that go toward making a good Officer and CFS experience is just one part of that. People and management skills are among these and are skills that can be gained outside of CFS.

I know some of you guys come from Brigades where there are many people itching to have a shot at these roles but there are many, many Brigades out there where it is a real struggle to find people willing to commit to them.

This year was the first year ever that we had only one nomination for each position. A few years back we had up to 6 up for every position . Makes for a long night the way the regs state the elections need to be run. (ie: six nominees leave, rest vote, bottom vote getter rejoins voters and is part of the next vote for the 5 left, etc etc for the 4 then the 3 then the 2!!!!!!!!!)

Could you offer to run a session for your Brigade to help out the enthusiasm thing? Just a thought - don't make it TOO flash or complicated if there's not much happening at your training at the moment - the older, less enthusiastic members may switch off to it

I honestly don't think that if enthusiasm is waning for training (rhymes!) that it equates to people "not giving a rats". It is hard to continually have interesting and useful training sessions on a long term basis and it involves time commitment to planning and preparation.

Also when you've been to training every week for 10, 15, 20 years or so seriously it is hard to get overly enthused and motivated sometimes!

Well, I thought I was passionate about this issue 

I would like to respect the views of those (weirdos) that do support the "corporate" logo - I just haven't found one yet. LOL

Four calls where you made a difference is worth 400 stop calls

Every Thursday, occasional Sunday arvo.

In the areas we serve I think the reverse is actually true. The public perception is that the CFS does bushfires and nothing else. They believe SES does all rescue.

Murray Bridge MFS has very limted rescue capabilities and is only the town response. Murray Bridge SES do all the surrounding areas (ie freeway) and therefore the lions share of rescue in that area.

Tailem Bend CFS covers 1st rescue halfway to MB, halfway to Coonalpyn (CFS Rescue), halfway to Meningie (SES Rescue), halfway to Karoonda (CFS Rescue) and halfway to Lameroo (CFS Rescue) (over 50km). But most of the people in this area would not generally be aware CFS does rescue.

On the urban/rural, rural/urban, rural thing.

When the SFEC document was last released each Brigade had what is called a Brigade Prescription which specfies what rating they are, what their ratings in the three areas (structural, special, urban) is, what equipment, resources and levels of training are required. We are prescribed lots of things that we don't have (as I am sure many others are) so it is not a magic recipe to receive resources galore. A lot of Brigades consider themselves urban/rural and may say that they are (and I'm sure they're morally justified) but there are actually very few "officially" and they're not all 200+ response stations - far from it.

Is HV Rescue or Hazmat? If they don't have these risks to cover their special service rating is probably fairly low. Also being EMA means that they have ready access to specialist resources?? I'm not sure how EMA affects the risk ratings but I would guess the risks are attributed to the red truck Brigade. The formulas many many years ago were done from insurance data, incident history and many factors like that but I'm hard pressed to ascertain how they've been updated and what goes down with them now.

They could have been on to something there.

We all seem to want to look professional, like our sister service,but we don't see them running around with boy scout badges on.

Self examination time - is there not a slight desire among some to say, look at me, I have skills you don't. Could this be a reason that some would really like this system rather than operational reasons. Not that there's anything at all wrong with being proud of the training you have undertaken.

Funny isn't it?

Not one member of our Brigade has EVER had the taxi logo on their helmets.

The pre logo appliance still proudly wears the star.

Now I know this is an old, richly debated topic, but WHO actually does like the "corporate" logo?

Dunno, seemed operator thought that because MVA was car vs cow that fire service was not required. Long, scary story but really, this issue has been resolved.