First fires of the season

[Farsouthscanner]

Hi all
Just for everyone's info.
Two main fires on the far south coast. One up near Batemans Bay. Numerous crews on that one. Nearly all of Eurobodalla by the sound of it.
The one closer to home though is on Brown Mountain near Cochrane Dam.
Crews are pulling out from the mountain area and will be doing property protection for the power station. Aircraft and dozers will be activated in the morning. There isn’t much that can be done in the area tonight apart from property protection. Bemboka, Numbugga, Candelo are on scene and Wolumla is responding to the power station but is a long way off.
Fire stream is locked onto RFS channels
Mark

[Bigfella237]

The fire down south is being run on PMR while the one near Batemans Bay is being run on GD24

The B/Bay fire was a Forestry burn gone wrong (or so one of the groupies said)? Gotta love 'em... light up, check the watch "oh it's knock off time, we're outta here"!

Andrew

[Farsouthscanner]

There is some HRs around my local area, thought they might end up where they shouldn't be but somehow they have stayed under control.
The good thing about having PMR and GRN coverage is you can run two incidents, hearing some different UHF fireground channels being announced, usually just CH20 but tonight I have heard CH 32 mentioned. CH20 must have been used by someone else in ear shot.

[Bigfella237]

Don't get me started on an emergency service using UHFCB channels for "mission critical" use, that's just wrong on so many levels!

I haven't seen the new RFS GRN profile yet but I do think they should've taken the opportunity to give each D/T/Z it's own "tactical" talkgroups simular to how the SES set up their radio profile, I know there's 15 "OPS" talkgroups available but it's not unheard of for there to be more than 15 incidents running concurrently across the entire state, especially on a hot windy day like today?

Andrew

[Longreach]

Hi all, yeah we had 2 big fires today here too, they did the same as the far south, ran the Pejar fire on the PMR and ran the caoura rd Tallong fire on GRN TG GD86.
Was quite effective and I get the feeling there will be more run this way in the future.
Cheers all
Matt

[Bigfella237]

While I'm having a whinge, this business of having each crew leader read-out the names of every crew member over-the-air is a joke! Have they never heard of privacy laws? Do they think they're using a secure channel and nobody else is listening?

If, God forbid, anybody was over-run and injured or worse, anyone in the media for example (present company excluded of course ) with a recording of the incident gets a list of those involved long before it's released through official channels.

This practice is just amateur-hour IMO, and if I was one of those crew leaders then Firecom would be told to contact me via secure means or go jump!

Andrew

[Farsouthscanner]

Good points Andrew.
The only advantage of using CB is its cheap and the members can easily buy their own. Having said that members could have .5Watt up to 5Watt so comms can break down quickly depending on terrain.
They should really have a TG per area like the SES can't understand why they haven't.
Hope everything's ok with the fires up your way Matt.
Just got home and looking out the window I can see a large amount of smoke from down south heading east out to sea, also can see some smoke to the north, hope its from the HR north of Merimbula and hope more so that they are still contained.
Listening to RFS, haven't heard anything so its probably a good sign.

[Bigfella237]

Yep, all seems to have settled down a bit today, although they're still asking for weather forecasts for the next week!

~ members can easily buy their own. ~

Of course the big question is... why should a volunteer, who's already giving his or her time gratis, have to put their hand in their pocket to buy their own radio?

Yes, I know this happens a LOT, but it shouldn't! This has been one of my gripes with the RFS for a long time, all these millions of dollars going into running the agency and the volunteer on the ground has to buy their own equipment?

This particular tree is WAY too top-heavy and it's only getting worse, is it any wonder they can't get bums in seats? Listening to this "Runnyford" fire, they have trucks parked up at the staging area without crews to run them, and the crews that are there, are being sent home at midnight and expected to be back on the fireline six hours later?

Andrew

[Farsouthscanner]

Your right Andrew, all equipment should be provided especially basics like radios.
Regarding the Runnyford fire, I didn't follow that one too closely but why didn't they get one or two crews in from other areas to cover. It seems like a big OH&S risk to have people go out again after just 6 hours.
Mark

[centralcoastscanman]

While I'm having a whinge, this business of having each crew leader read-out the names of every crew member over-the-air is a joke! Have they never heard of privacy laws? Do they think they're using a secure channel and nobody else is listening?

If, God forbid, anybody was over-run and injured or worse, anyone in the media for example (present company excluded of course ) with a recording of the incident gets a list of those involved long before it's released through official channels.

This practice is just amateur-hour IMO, and if I was one of those crew leaders then Firecom would be told to contact me via secure means or go jump!

Andrew

When I was in Gosford RFS a couple of years ago we were told crew numbers over the air and thats it... ie Kariong 1 with crew members 1, 24, 5, 23
meant sweet fa to us, but apparently there was a list of names that matched those numbers

That was professional, probly the only professional thing their comms brigade was involved in as far as i was concerned