SA Firefighter

Probably doing Para Group a favour with it offline its a piece of you know what that tanker

Check with your Group administration officer they should know.

As for stuff going missing I hope that is a genuine mistake or mix up of equipment.

We are missing one VHF off our appliance but hey it happens, better to send them over fully operational as for handing out VHF's at staging areas I could see that falling into a big hole!

Positions were filled by a contracting company they use!

I agree with not putting them on an appliance if you don't know them.

We have guys that ride with us on some jobs but they train with us as well as their own brigades.

As well as we have a few members that will soon respond with a HAZMAT brigade in our group from my brigade when they are short as they have the training from another service and will be training with that brigade as well as making themselves familiar with their appliances.

I thought you lads were talking about appliances!!!

Not kicking around the CFS/MFS football again.

I think they look good white plus all the other advantages listed i.e. cost, visibility, ease to repair the colour if paint work is required.

I think the only other paint that would look good would be whit on top of red similar to Q.F.R.S. that look o.k. in my opinion!

6793264 hit the nail on the head MSA make a nice detector and so do Drager both 4 sensor H2S, LEL, Co and O2. The only problem I could see for a CFS brigade is a training course in operating gas detectors and the cost of sending them away for repair, service or paying for a coulpe of your members to be trained to service them. Not hard to service and repair once you do the course.

MFS use BW one's we had them for a trial period and were not the best by far.

I use to be at a brigade that was near a train station and the drivers of the trains could see us coming a mile away so they would stop. Of cause you'd look for the second train and be more than cautious crossing the lines. If there was a freight train or a large interstate train forget about it, lights and sirens off put through a delayed response to Adelaide fire and wait.

This was years ago so I dont know what that brigade does now!

Very interesting Fire frog wonder why they have never considered BIC we use it at my work as well and it is amazingly quick. Only on 38mm hose not 64mm.

Did a course with N.S.W. fire fighters recently and we were using SAFB London round at a certain training centre and yes they wondered why we are still in the dark ages with hoses considering MFS and CFS are pretty much up the top with everything else!

Its nice on the inside, compared to a lot of other stations. Large meeting area, radio room, two offices, equipment room and toilets and a shower. Plus it has been there for a long time before the second world war, back then it was just a tin shed.

The boys are fairly happy there new 34P, 14 CAFs, 24 approx ten years old and a fairly new Nissan Patrol.

Plus two pubs just across the road!

And if the person with the station mobile is unavailable / out of reception / misses the page, what happens then?  How do the people at the station know if the page has been acknowledged? What if the duty officer (who acknowledges the page) is 15 minutes from the station and arrives to find no one else has responded? In an urban brigade, the brigade should have defaulted 10 minutes ago...

To answer to this is simple the duty officer is the Capt/Lt if they are out of area one of the other Lt's has the duty phone so therefore has a radio on them so knows whats going on at the station. Has been working at our station for years as we rarely get responded by CFS SOC. We use to make it first to the station but some of the guys would forget with being more interested in getting the appliance out the door, but what ever works for the individual brigade is fine.

 The whole cadet thing is a sticky issue especially meeting all the legal stuff to make sure you’re covered i.e. following procedures, police checks, and minimum levels of adult to cadet numbers. CFS is not unique as I use to coach a team of kids in soccer and the club went through the whole thing before CFS did, but in saying that I think it is a good thing as the protection of children is paramount.

In my opinion and many of my peers, I think 16 is too young for a fire fighter I think it should be 18. Also you should limit there exposure to nasty prangs and structures that have fatalities for a year or two (20, 21).

 I use to think the same as some have said “I went to those sorts of jobs when I was young and I’m fine”. A few years ago I saw a mate of mine get a depressed by all the nasty jobs over the years and it just got too much.

So when you have experts like Jill Scott saying it’s to young and a lot of fire fighters that are paid and CFS that double their exposure to nasty jobs saying it’s too young. In my opinion I think we should listen.

I had a young F/F challenge me once when he arrived on our second appliance for fire cover and I told their OIC to hold the crew there. I said to him you’ll get plenty of time to see the gore I’ve been doing it for 15 years and I don’t go out of my way to see it. Plus it looks unprofessional when you've got heaps of guys all over the scene when they dont need to be.

Good point Pipster, as OIC you have to be slightly detached from the hands on work and consentrate on your role as incident controller or as an OIC of a RCR appliance as the "Rescue Officer" for all the reasons Pipster listed.

The hands on between you and your crew is your SNR F/F in that role they should have a greater understanding of your action plan relayed to your crew and a higher level of skills than your fire fighters to make sure it happens.

But I do agree with the comment of some Officers just belting out instructions like a power control freak makes you look unprofessional and like you have really not got a grip on what your doing. Plus it just destroys morale.