HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-11-27 Daily Xml
Contents
Pdf Xml

EMERGENCY SERVICES EQUIPMENT DISPLAY NIGHT

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (15:39): I rise to talk about the Kangarilla CFS and the Mawson CFS Group equipment night, which was held on 19 November, a week ago yesterday. As a member of the Kangarilla CFS I was very proud to be part of the night, and was joined by the member for Mawson, Mr Leon Bignell, who was there to help appreciate the efforts and see the displays put on not only by the CFS but also by the MFS, the Volunteer Coast Guard Lonsdale, Sturt CFS Group, the Mount Lofty CFS Group, the Heysen CFS Group, the Kyeema CFS Group, CFS training centre staff, the CFS Commander and staff from Region 1, and also people from the SAFECOM Emergency Services Stress Prevention and Management Unit. SA Police were there, as well as the SES and St Johns, and the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources was there with some of their equipment, as well.

The whole idea of the night was to showcase all the equipment used by the various services, and to allow the members of the different services to meet each other and to look at the equipment that is available should they be required to work in a cooperative manner at an incident in the future. They do that so well, as we have seen in the past and only just recently over at Port Lincoln. I am sure that level of cooperation will only be enhanced by nights like this.

It was a pleasure to see the number of CFS and other emergency service personnel there, along with their families. It was a family night as well, and there were many spouses and children looking at the more than 52 emergency vehicles with the 182 emergency service personnel who participated that night. The need to display the range of equipment and the expertise of the personnel is very important. The South Australian Urban Search and Rescue unit of the Metropolitan Fire services was also there. They showed some of their fantastic equipment, and I know they train SES and CFS personnel with MFS personnel in urban search and rescue.

The equipment needs to be displayed to enable family members and the public in general to be aware of what we do have at our disposal, not only through our paid fire fighters but also through the volunteers in the CFS, SES and other volunteer emergency services that we have here in South Australia. We should all be very proud of that night; I know the member for Mawson was very supportive of all the people that night, and I am sure he will be able to tell members in this place about his experiences that night.

As a member of the CFS, each year we have to do our burn-over drill. In other words, if you are out at a bushfire and the fire front turns around and comes towards the vehicle and you are threatened with being engulfed by the fire—being 'burnt over'—you need to know what to do and how to react. I did my annual burn-over drill that night with the Chief Officer of the CFS, Mr Greg Nettleton. We had it ticked off; we both actually passed it that night, so we are able to participate in fire-fighting activities again this summer.

The Mount Lofty Ranges fire danger season officially starts on Saturday, 1 December, but we are already seeing very high temperatures. We have 39° forecast for Adelaide on Thursday, with high winds, and we just hope that the CFS does not have to do what they are prepared to do: that is, get out there and fight the bushfires with the many millions of dollars of equipment at their disposal. The millions of hours they save the state, in volunteering, is something we should never, ever forget.

I just remind members in this place to let their constituents know that the new CFS app is available, the smartphone app. You can go on there, locate your property, wherever you are, and then you can decide how far around your property you want to be alerted if there is an incident—whether it is five, 10, 15 or 20 kilometres. You will then be sent alerts to your iPhone. Whether it is for a car accident or a bushfire, but more particularly bushfires, it is very important that people start using this smart technology, wherever you are. We have a property down at Meadows. My wife was in Sydney on the weekend, and there was a grass fire not far from our place. She received an alert over there. At least she knew where the fire was and where the house was. It is good technology and we should all be using it.

We should also be encouraging the government to support the private member's bill I have introduced today to incorporate the South Australian CFS volunteer charter in the Emergency Services Act. The CFS is a group of which I am very proud to be a member, and I know that every member in this place is very proud of the CFS. I encourage them, when the equipment night is being held next year, to come along and show their support for the CFS by their presence there.

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:44): I rise to continue on the same theme. As the member for Morphett indicated, last week, we were at Kangarilla for the display of pretty much all the emergency services. The South Australian Ambulance Service was a last-minute scratching because of an operational issue that came up but they have normally been there.

I have attended the last couple of years when it was held at McLaren Flat and, this year, it moved to Kangarilla. It is just a wonderful night that gets everyone together in the one place. Often, these people come together in the height of emergencies when there is not much time for small talk or to get to know each other, so they actually get to know each other, walk around, have a look at the different capabilities and the different pieces of equipment that they have.

I found it interesting, as I did last year, to see some of the equipment the SES have to get out and rescue people who might be floating down a fast-flowing creek or drain or something like that. There is all this equipment that you do not really see. Obviously, these people use it week in, week out, in their training and they are to be commended for all the work that they do. We see them at emergencies, whether it be a bushfire or car accident but, apart from doing their normal job, these people are out there training week in, week out.

People like the member for Morphett and, I know, other members in this place are CFS volunteers—thank you to them and to all the volunteers we have throughout the state. It has been said many times that no state could ever afford to provide the sort of emergency services that we are blessed to have without all the volunteers—the thousands and thousands of volunteers—who put in so many hours each and every week, which must total hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours.

The member for Morphett went through the groups that were there, but I did not hear all of them so, just in case he missed some out, I will just reiterate because I think it is really important that we pay tribute to everyone who was there. Firstly, the Mawson CFS Group, who were the event organisers and did the incident control exercise, did a fantastic job of getting people in and out. There was big, heavy equipment and people walking around the place and they made sure that it was all done very safely. It was good to see family members of the volunteers and the paid firefighters and also the cadets. It is always great to see the CFS cadets. I was really pleased to see a group there from McLaren Flat. They were in their overalls and they were taking it very seriously.

They were as excited as me, I think, when the firefighters put on a display about how to cool down a house fire and how you extinguish it without destroying everything in the house. Obviously, forensics have to go in there and comb through looking for clues. The last thing they want is for the firefighters to have destroyed everything with the water. It was quite interesting to see how they just apply a little bit of water and cool the whole fire down by creating more and more steam and so on. The kids were excited by that and so was I.

The Chief Officer of the CFS, Greg Nettleton, was there and I know everyone was buoyed to see him. The Minister for Emergency Services was overseas and sent an apology. The CFS State Training Centre was there, Region 1 CFS commander and staff were there, and Region 1 staging pod was set up for the night. The CFS volunteer support officer had Safer Precincts information and I got some of the brochures that they had.

The Kyeema CFS Group, the Heysen CFS Group, the Mount Lofty CFS Group and the Sturt CFS Group were there. MFS had their chemical biological response personnel as well as operational crews. South Australian Urban Search and Rescue were there. The emergency service stress prevention and management people from SAFECOM were also on hand as were the South Australia Police.

I know the police officers who I spoke to that night also really appreciated the time that they had to get around and look at the equipment and the various trucks. Things are changing all the time. The trucks are actually getting so big now that they are causing some problems with low-hanging branches and things like that. There was a prototype fire truck there that night, which is a smaller unit that gives a little bit more manoeuvrability and is a little bit lower but still holds a similar amount of water, so that is something that people will be having a look at and looking at the merits of the new design.

As I said before, the SES were there as were St John's. The St John's volunteers do a fantastic job. The Volunteer Coast Guard were over from Lonsdale, as were the firefighters from our national parks. So, all up, 182 emergency services personnel were there with 52 emergency service vehicles. I would really like to pay tribute to Garrick Lehmann, who organised the whole night. He is an MFS firefighter but also a CFS volunteer, so he brings together both facets and did an amazing job to bring everyone together on the night.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT