SA Firefighter

Doesn't it come down to common sense - send the  nearest & most appropriate resource - something that has been discussed at length on this (and other) forums, and with what appears to be widespread agreement that on all levels, nearest & most appropriate resource be sent!

Pip

And sometimes, people have to drive several minutes past an incident, before they get mobile phone reception......

If they return to the scene, you have lost all contact with them.

Happens constantly in the Adelaide Hills.....

Pip

And there's plenty of them around!!

Pip

Perhaps we all just relocate to the fire station...? 

Pip

Luckily, fire bans are not based on the temperature alone.  Wind strength has far more of an effect on the FDI, than the temperature.

Despite the high temps, and lowish humidity's, none of the FDI's are Catastrophic, and only predicted to be Extreme, a few are Severe and the rest only very high.

Monday, with the change coming in has the potential to be an interesting fire weather day.....

Pip

Coondambo is where the Glendambo CFS appliance is kept...and where there is an airstrip.....

Pip

Don't jinx them Robert!!!

That is not 'The' Anstey 14, the lack of bullbar bling (polished alloy bar) is a dead giveaway.
I think you'll find 'the' Anstey is safe and well at Black Hole.

But I did hear about another parks 14 acco... Not sure that this is it though.
Something about a handbrake failure at a recent burn.

Not at Cleland either...

Ahm, the new Anstey 14 might exist with a shiny bull bar, but the one pictured was crashed back in the first part of 2008...and it was Anstey 14 at that time!!

As for crashing accos.... it has been a number of years since parks had an acco in the fleet......!

Pip

It is disappointing that there are many brigades around who do not have the pagers for their active members, due to a shortage state wide.  I know some brigades who have lost their new members, because they haven't been able to supply a pager to them (and don't look like being able to for a while yet!!)

SMS is not the answer, but is at least a temporary measure.

However, with SMS, apart from the issues previously discussed on this (and other forums, there is a new problem.

The new problem, as I see it from a fire fighters perspective is the new phone messaging alert system that is being introduced - the one which sends a text message to mobiles in a particular area, advising of a fire.    If a brigade within that area tries to send out an incident call to its members, who don't have a pager, and it coincides with the messaging alert calls, the chance of the message getting through to CFS members, in a timely fashion, is looking less & less likely!

Certainly at other large fires - including Black Tuesday, around Lincoln, and also around Mt Osmond, the recent Proper Bay fire, and I am sure many others, the mobile phone networks were full to capacity, and there were delays in getting access to the network to make calls......very difficult when you are on a fire ground, and trying to make incident related calls!!

I am aware (like many others) of numerous brigades who have been waiting 12 months+ for pagers. It is a disgrace that it has got to this point of such a severe lack of pagers.  Perhaps with election time coming up fast, the Government needs to be brought to account!

Pip

I don't think they'd want more applicants to wade through.....I vaguely recall something like over 1000 applicants for less than 100 positions...!

Pip

And, by the nature of warnings, they are very sterile, and don't really tell you much about what is actually happening.

Listening to the warnings over the Pine Point fire a few weeks ago, (mixed up with other warnings for other fires) I just ended up switching off...until a person rang, who said he was in the CFS.

I don't know if he was with the IMT (it sort of sounded like he might have been), or whether he had official sanction to speak publically to the media, but he came across reasonably well - and gave far more information about what was happening with the fire in a more listener friendly way.

The sort of stuff he spoke of was along the lines of roughly how many trucks were on the fire ground, what strike teams were coming, generally what was burning (eg grain crop),what the fire behaviour was like (eg flame height) and what conditions the firefighters were facing.

In the few minutes the person spoke, he gave far more general info than we had got in the previous few hours via official media releases - and gave a much better picture of what was actually happening.

I hope that this type of information release can be utilised more often!

Pip

Fact.  It has already happened.  Think Primo, Port Wakefield.

Pip

And thus shows one of the major problems with the CFS. We just can't stand to evaluate our actions when things go wrong. We're more than happy to stand back and and offer our condolences (as we should) but there is a lesson to be learned from most of these 'accidents' so that they can be avoided in the future.

We need to be open to learn from our mistakes as a service. It's pretty obvious that in this case, as with Mt. Bryan and Murray Bridge that someone cocked up in a major way. Once we work out what has occurred people need to be made aware so that we can learn from this and use this as an example of what can happen when people aren't paying attention, suffer tunnel vision or whatever else may have caused the prang.

Bring on PSTP "Operate and Maintain Common Sense"!

Of course we must learn from the mistakes made.  And yes, someone, obviously made a mistake.

However, the actual cause of this crash, and what mistakes were made, are, at least on this forum currently, just speculation.   We need to be careful of making assumptions about what happened, based on small snippets of information gained from the media.

Pip