Rest assured that, if you ever require the help of the Rural Fire Service, you will have a happy, well informed and highly skilled unit of volunteers coming to your aid.
The Rural Fire Service held an information session for its New England Zone members, with Assistant Commissioner Dominic Lane hosting the forum at TAS last Saturday.
Since the devastating Victorian bushfires on February 7, 2009, where 173 people lost their lives, and the subsequent Royal Commission, there have been significant changes to the way the RFS operates, from a new fire danger rating system, bushfire alert system and the RFS’s approach to assisting people in vulnerable areas. The information session was a chance for the Assistant Commissioner to outline these changes and field questions from members.
“My visit here today is threefold; firstly to discuss some of the new innovations and changes that the Rural Fire Service is undergoing including hazard reduction, community education events and a new radio communication system that we are rolling out,” said Assistant Commissioner Dominic Lane.
“Secondly, whilst we have been through two reasonably quiet fire seasons, we only have to go back to 2009 to recognise the significance fire has here in the New England and the Northern Tablelands, so it’s about discussing some of those things and preparing for what potentially could be a very bad fire season throughout NSW given the enormous amount growth of grass.
“And thirdly, it is about getting the issues and views of volunteers from the local area.”
The Assistant Commis-sioner believes that members are reasonably comfortable with the progress the service is making in a number of areas, including the implementation of its tanker fleet and its approach to flexible membership.
“Without a doubt, in regional areas you have a higher percentage of the population volunteering,” said Mr Lane.
“If the percentage of volunteers in the city was about twenty per cent, in NSW regional areas you know it would be about 100 per cent.
“That’s because people help each other out all the time, people recognise the risk that fire is to their own properties and people recognise that the RFS is the best way to counter those risks.”
New England RFS Zone Manager Steve Mepham is confident that his members will get a lot from the Assistant Commissioner’s visit.
“There’s been a lot of change and new challenges in the service at the moment,” said Steve Mepham.
“There is a lot of speculation about how this affects me as a member, so this is a chance for members to talk about those issues.
“We are going quite well at the moment, recruiting at about 12 per cent a year and our retirees are representing about four per cent of that,so we are growing and there is a lot of confidence in the service at the moment and enjoying what they are going through.”
Story: Jo Harrison
