SA Firefighter

MFS: *CFSRES INC038 03/02/09 10:57,RESPOND To,41 SEAFORD RD,SEAFORD MEADOWS MAP 195 K 13 TG134,BUILDING SITE, COMPACTION ROLLER ALIGHT,SEAF00 CDN431

Does that count as the first job for the Seaford station.

The superintendant of SAPOL Corporate Communications who organised it was on the ABC this morning and said that it was organised by Telstra, and all Telstra mobile phone users in SA would receive the message. They will be still delivered today for about another 5 hours.

When the issue of cost was raised he said it was a 'Community Service Announcement' which means either Telstra are doing it for free or the government are picking up the tab and he didn't want to be drawn into it.

For info I got my message at 23:30, a little earlier would have been nicer.

Just to go back to the original post, responding back to a station in a Group Car, Logistics Car or even our 14 priority one for a firecall is not what we do in our Group.

If you are out in a Command Car and a job comes in then you respond to the station under normal driving conditions like all the other members do. If you are more than a few minutes away and miss the truck then too bad, obviously everyone else is closer and you are not needed. This has happened to me a number of times and we have never responded P1 to the station, if an accident was to happen the question would definetly be asked of what exactly you were responding P1 for, isn't that why you have other members in the brigade.

Of course if someone else requests you to respond back to the station P1 then that is a different story, as that person has then taken on the responsibility of authorising you to respond, if in doubt then check with your Group Duty Officer as to what you should do.

Responding P1 for no need makes us look like dads army and just creates OH&S issues. Even if we are out in our 14 and we get a job that requires our 24 or 24P we still only return priority 2, obviously if it is a job that our 14 would normally respond to then we will respond direct to the job (as long as we are in area and appropriately crewed).

As for Group Officers responding P1 to jobs that is easily covered with this line in the SOP's

incidents which are not under control or are in an unknown condition  NB:Command vehicles and staff vehicles shall not respond p1 to any incidents below 2nd alarm unless requested by incident controller.

This talk of trucks responding from the city to jobs back in their own areas reminds me of a situation that occurred to one of our neighbouring brigades many years ago, I think they got an alarm call back home whilst their truck was in the city, you can guess what happened.

At the moment it is just the four TV commercials that went to air on the regional television stations, but there may be more to be put on here in the future http://au.youtube.com/user/CFSVA

Looks like since the latest BOMS upgrade there has been some formatting changes to the response pager messages.

It appears that now a few spaces are being missed and words are running into each other, just to make life that little bit more confusing for guys responding to incidents.

MFS: *CFSRES INC021 16/01/09 11:25,RESPOND COMMERCIAL FIRE,RUWOLDTRD,YAHL MAP 000 0 0 TG226,ALARM IN CEILING SPACE AT THE OAKSNURSI,NG HOME THEY ARE EVAC PATIENTS,YAHL00 MTG701

MFS: *CFSRES INC019 16/01/09 10:41,RESPOND Tree Down,40 STURTAPP,FLAGSTAFF HILL MAP 166 K 6,TREE DOWN ON HOUSE, BLOCKING ACCESSTO D,OOR. P3. RICKY 0416 389 994,STT020

MFS: *CFSRES INC017 16/01/09 10:26,RESPOND ALARM 40/111,FLINDERS MEDICALCENTRE,FLINDERS DR,BEDFORD PARK MAP 153 K 5 TG182,FIP MIMIC-SOUTHWARD MAIN FOYER ENTRY,,ADL205 STM409 OHH421

MFS: *CFSRES INC014 16/01/09 09:35,RESPOND Smoke in Area,CHARFORDST,ELIZABETH NORTH MAP 52 B 5 TG182,SMELL OF SMOKE TOWARDS ELIZSHOPPING CEN,TRE AROUND CHARFORD ST,SAIR55 ELZ331

MFS: *CFSRES INC001 16/01/09 00:00,RESPOND Vehicle Accident,81 NORTHRD,NAIRNE MAP 162 A 8 TG128,SINGLE CAR ROLL OVER,MBKR19 NAIR00

Not a major drama but you would think with an upgrade you would also see an improvement, not a reduction in service (although anyone that has used Vista may also be able to relate to that).

Jeff, are you talking about grant application being rejected, or do you mean someone is not allowing you to purchase an AED and carry it on your appliance ??

Or are you referring to Oxygen therapy gear, in which case I think it may be time to have another crack at getting it approved.

Just thought I would update our situation at Morphett Vale in regards to the AED's.

We have been successful in gaining two grants for the purchase of AED's. After some consultation and a bit of investigation we are looking at getting two of the Lifeline Defibtech units http://www.defibtech.com/. There are other units around that have more bells and whistles but for robustness and ease of use these seem to the be pretty good. Apparently the service from the company is very good as well. There is a good demo on their website of how easy it is to use if you are interested.

We have some training organised from the supplier in the specific use of these units as well as some general AED training for those that haven't done it on their first aid course yet.

I know of one other brigade that has also received a grant for one, anyone else buying them yet ??

Robert it is a very long bow to compare MFB to CFS (as you know so I wont both to point out the differences).

You can exchange MFB for CFA now, the CFA have been running a trial EMR system for at least 12 months now in certain areas. From what I understand selected CFA vollies that choose to be part of the program are given an extensive training program from the Ambulance service, the brigade is kitted out with an AED, 02 and extensive first aid / trauma kit.

The brigade is responded via pager to any CAT1 (non breathing / non responsive) jobs where an ambulance is unlikely to be on scene within a certain time (7 mins sounds familiar). If the CFA brigade are closer or can reasonably be expected to be there first they go. Normally it is just two vollies in a command car or Quick Attack, however I think a few brigades may be using their pumper (as part of the trial they wanted to evaluate different combinations of response)

Initial trial results have shown many positive patient outcomes with a few good saves. The downside is obviously more work for some vollies (training / re-cert and calls) and exposure to some of the more nasty jobs (deceased children, lots of drug overdoses etc). However all the vollies are given the facts about what they can expect and what is involved before they sign up to the program.

The community is the winner out of the whole program so it has got to be a good thing. I think the trial is still underway but the word is that they can expect to see the program rolled out further across the service in the coming year.

If it can work in Victoria why wouldn't it work here, the CFA and CFS are very similar organisations, surely it is worth a look at and possibly a trial of some sort.

A bit of an update on the Turnout Information Management system (TIM).

I know that some of you are keen to setup up the Turnout System in your own station, until recently we have not had the ability to intercept messages from the Alpha Off Air Decoder and were running it via PDW and a scanner, but that has now been rectified so the developer is now in a position to offer this program out to other brigades.

Our system at Morphett Vale is now running well, we have all messages coming from the Alpha OAD which increases reliability and means no reliance on third party software. It also means that neighbouring brigades messages are now displayed on the monitors (but no turnout alarm, voice over or map printout). We are also about to implement the page two printout for any pre-plan information we have on our major premises, this will be very useful for our fixed / private alarms.

Basically it has been working very well for us, the guys use the maps for pretty much every job and it certainly saves time. The monitors are very useful, especially when calling Adelaide Fire and needing the incident number as it is now staring at you from the front of the truck. And the voice over is handy for letting everyone know what the job is (how many people still don't read their pager when they come down for a job).

A number of HQ and Regional staff have had a look and have all said it is good and should be pushed further, the MFS also have it running at a couple of stations and seem happy with it. There was some talk of a statewide CFS / MFS licence at one stage but that has now gone quiet I think. I believe it will still be up to brigades to instigate their own purchase of the software at this point, I think it is still $600 for a volunteer brigade license.

If your interested in setting it up here is a bit of an overview of what you need hardware wise:

1) A robust PC running windows, I think 2000 is ok but we are using XP, I guess Vista will work as well. This should preferably be hooked up to a UPS.

2) A printer (if you want map printing)

3) A monitor, well at least one. We have three running from a VGA splitter box (it can support up to eight). One in the radio room and two in the engine bay, maybe another in the meeting room too.

4) A P.A. system, this is connected from the output of the PC to the input on the P.A. to give you the voice over announcements.

5) Your Alpha Off Air Decoder needs to be re-programmed and connected to a serial port on the PC. The re-programming can be arranged through Blu-fi Wireless at Kent Town. Contact me if you are serious and I can give you some more info about it.

That is about it really, if you want to have a look at how it works or want to contact the developer send me a PM and I will pass on his contact details.

Matt

Matt nothing wrong with your brigade site......

Actually there is a lot wrong with it Bill, but it still meets it's aim of being quick to load and reasonably well updated, thanks anyway for the kind words.

But back to matter at hand when do you send the next resource if the initial resource is not on the road in ten minutes in a more populous area and its a life / property threat and 30 minutes in the so so populated areas

Within our group we allow four minutes for the urban brigades and six minutes for the rural's. In my brigade at the four minute mark if we are not mobile the brigade duty officer is on the phone to the station to find out what is going on and turning out the next closest resource, we then also hit the 'More Crew' button on the Alpha decoder.

Just wondering if other brigades have started purchasing AED's yet.

Our Group has now got one in each Command Car and each brigade is likely to get one (due to some second hand ones being donated) my brigade is about to purchase at least another one - possibly two depending on how another grant application goes.

Should the CFS be recommending a particular brand or model, or do we just leave it up to brigades to purchase whatever they like.

I've got a few quotes on different models but am still not sure which one to go for, and reading some of the info on here confused the situation a bit more. Anyone got an suggestions for up to $3000.