SA Firefighter

I don't know if you're right or wrong and what it is STC do with the assessments. But as a BFF1 instructor I am required to forward all the entire contents of the written assessment books. On the first one I ran, I only sent the tear out sheet that the units are signed off on and was told that this was no good. Had a great deal of trouble chasing them all up after the fact, too!!!

No need for two ambo services

I was Salt Creek's GTO until our Brigade changed Groups two days ago

I may be uninformed (maybe you know more Adam) but I doubt very much their crews have the Cert IV (although they train with Ambos every two weeks) and I am 99.9% sure they do not have defib. And I am not aware of any Salt Creek CFS members who crew the Meningie ambulance (it is 60km away). Maybe James you know someone down that way and can confirm otherwise? I will be talking to their BTO in the next few days so I will ask also

The way their Captain explained it to me was that they attended low priority incidents, performed basic first aid and determined if ambulance necessary.

Salt Creek has Kingston and Meningie within a reasonable distance. There would definately be many more fire stations that had ambos much further away.

Some US models involve paramedics attending as part of the fire service and the "ambulance" is basically a transport company.

Also use the Bullard "FireDome" - have been using for about 10 years now. Love it

It's not a light one but it's comfy and safe.

as long as the scene is safe, then surely any CFS appliance and crew has a right to leave... we dont get paid to stay there, police get turned out to every MVA, hand the scene over to the local patrol

We are unable to commence a rescue (ie: recovery of entrapped persons) in a fatality situation until major crash have done their bit.

So we are hanging around for hours with a lovely task ahead of us at the end of it. In the meanwhile, yes, we are providing fire cover, traffic control and something SAPOL can't provide which is essential - LIGHTING.

This is SOOO frustrating!

To be approved to deliver and assess BFF1 you have to hold a Certificate IV in Workplace Assessment and have been approved by your Group/Region to do so (ie have appropriate knowledge and experience).

My old group had 2 (now 3) of these approved instructors. To service 6 Brigades that are up to 130 km apart. (Now double that).

I'll use a recent course at Salt Creek for example. Three full, full Sundays - some particpants couldn't get to all three days suprise, suprise. The three qualified instrcutors had to give at least 2/3 days to the course, one travelling 120km each day, the other two 260km each day. The preparation took at least another day - the reading and rechecking the long answer books at least anohter 15 or so hours. These books have to go to STC so STC staff can see for themselves that these were answered adequately.

Even given this investment of volunteer time (and we all know how hard it is to get that many vollies together at times that suit them) it was very very difficult to get through the requirements. Yes, I made them all go up a ladder and if anyone had not been able to it would've been recorded in their assessment books with a reason why and forwarded to STC for their determination.

Now I love my service and I am passionate about training, but I have a full time job, four kids, and Brigade operational committments. So when I am still trying to chase down people to complete various components or check that they did really understand a point that was a bit clouded in their assessement books a month after the course - Well, you can understand why shortcuts are sometimes taken (NOT BY ME!!!)

But perhaps an instructor that appears to gloss over something is using their judgement that the person at hand has the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Instructors ARE accountable if they asseess someone as competent - in your ladder example if these people had not gone up the ladder but were recorded as having done so then this should be escalated to STC level.

Only 2 of ours doors are Electric, but they run off 3 phase power, which means in a blackout, the backup generator won't open them, and to open them by hand takes ~5-10 minutes (literally)... Don't any other brigades have trouble with blackouts and Electric doors?

Our doors activate as soon as the *CFS RES page goes out. In a black out if lifted manually they are quite a pain as the motor needs knocking out of gear before manually raising them. They are quite old and it takes ages to get them to close properly after this has been done. Emergency power supplies are a solution to this problem but in the old days I used to go to the station as soon as there was a power outage  (allowed me to check that radios had gone over to battery power OK) and run an extenstion cord from the 5kva generator on board the appliance to the door control. In the event of a call it took 10 seconds to start the generator, lift the doors, unplug the cord and away!!

We have always had a UHF in station, later fitting one to the lead rural appliance and have recently, due to the usefulness, had one fitted to the P. Our Group (well our old Group ) even had proper laser cut signs printed to identify that we had had UHF 10.

While I guess it was primarily for fireground chatter with the farmers around the more rural Brigades we have utilised it several times to ask truckies for locations of vehicle accidents where we have been unable to locate or info was confusing. A favourite we get here is something like 10kms towards Melbourne on the Princes Hwy. The (main)road to Melbourne is actually the Dukes Hwy past Tailem Bend with the Princes Hwy going south to Mt Gambier. Even local (MB) police will insist it's on the road to Melbourne, the Princes Hwy. These could be anywhere - including the Mallee Hwy (Ouyen Hwy,Pinnaroo Rd) to Sydney.

About 10 seconds on the UHF and we get completely accurate info

Hi Firefighter_SA

Good question - see discussion under the Hazmat section.

http://www.safirefighter.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=53&topic=212.0

Glad you enjoyed the loan, and glad to have her back

We use the crossfire structure golves - same as Brukunga (at least last time I went there). They are a bit bulky and not real flash after they've been wet a few times but no real problems.

I think peoples views differ, as the SES have no role in Fire, or Fire related rescue at all.  Thus why amalgamation with the Fire Services would be rather unusual.

I'm not sure - I think the more unusual thing is to have an SES?

I don't think, for example, the LAFD are assisted by an SES type agency? I think many fire services around the world handle all fire/rescue type responses? (Including paramedics but let's not go there!)

OK, if you want input?? I was silent because the idea really didn't grab me but would be happy to hear others thoughts.

Only because I think the Incident Operations section serves the purpose and I'm personally only interested in hearing about specific jobs, not in July 2005 ABC Brigade did 10 fixed alarms, 8 wheelie bin fires, 7 stop calls and 2 MVA's This may interest other list members though, so let us know what you think!

Interesting that although many list members seem to be strong advocates of one fire service in this state (ie: MFS/CFS amalgamation) that they seem to differentiate with the SES. Surely one single fire/rescue response agency for the state would be the go, keeping in line with this thinking.

(Note that I personally remain unconvinced that that the fire/emergency services or the community would be better off under a single banner for many off thread reasons).