SA Firefighter

Its mainly the metro SES units that do this... And normally to a senior group (4-6 members)
Pretty much aimed at the jobs which may not require a response right that minute.
For example, it allows the duty officer or unit manager to recce a tree down, and perhaps postpone the task until outside working hours to make it more volunteer friendly. Instead of every member rushing to the unit...
A 5 minute difference in SES dispatch/arrival when local MFS/CFS are rolling isnt going to be a major problem..

I'm off to NSW in the morning with the rest of the crews
Should be interesting

I found it interesting the ex unit manager's (David Chatwin) comment that they seem to be a glorified gardening service (referring to the number of trees down calls) rather than a real rescue service.  I think he's quite right (as an outsider to the SES) but that seems to be what the SES heirarchy want.

As a member of the SES, thats just something we do.. We are the lead agency for storm and flood, storms cause trees to fall so we cut up trees. But I do understand the statement to an extent. It is frustrating to arrive at a Tree Down job that is something you would compare to a twig, that is blocking a persons driveway, where it could have easily been dragged out of the way...

The article goes on to say

All we seem to do at the moment is cut up trees and that's not why I joined the SES

The SES is a real rescue service, but the rescue's we specialise in come up rarely (Vertical, Land Search, Structural Collapse). Yes, it is hard to keep people interested when all they do is sandbag and remove trees, especially when they have been doing it for a number of years. And we have been doing a lot of these recently.. The aim is to become an expert in these rescue skills so that when the day comes and a person has fallen to the bottom of a cliff, or you have a structure collapse with persons trapped, you can perform the rescues swiftly and safely.

Hopefully the unit keeps going strong and can move on from the problems of the past..