CFA Connect Blogosphere

At the Foster fire station in South Gippsland today, we launched a set of new and innovative ‘online' programs and other products that's going to make the delivery and maintenance of CFA training a lot more accessible from now on.

Flood Relief Operations: As I write 3,500 people on 1,408 properties in 46 townships across 21 Municipalities have been affected by recent flooding in the west and central parts of Victoria. SES has logged nearly 5,500 requests for assistance and have performed 50 flood rescues. CFA has been strongly supporting SES on the ground, in local command, Division Command, Incident Management and at a State level. There have been dramatic actions, including one near Gordon where CFA, Vic Police, Ambulance and local famers were directly responsible for rescuing a youth who was trapped in a drain in rising flood waters. CFA is working as part of an integrated team with a range of emergency services and local government. A number of CFA facilities have been affected, including flooding at the Rochester Fire station and damage sustained to a number of firefighting vehicles. This has been a resounding team effort. It is not yet over. In the next few days we will see Horsham and Kerang come under pressure. We pause to think of the many people - and there will be CFA and SES volunteers amongst them - who have been affected by these floods. There will be a slow and long recovery. To everyone who has pitched in and helped - at any level and in any capacity: "THANK YOU! AND KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!" CFA is in constant contact with SES in Victoria and also is monitoring the situation in Queensland. We are constantly assessing if CFA has a capability to offer and where appropriate are making that offer to the control agencies.

After the One Source One Message (OSOM) system failure on Wednesday 16 December 2009, we commissioned an independent review by Deloitte to find out what went wrong. I talked about this in my last blog post when I said:

"It's important to clarify that the CFA website itself was unaffected; the problem was with the messages being fed to the website. The computer server that enables the messages to go to the website failed . . . We also immediately commissioned a full and independent audit of the OSOM system by auditors Deloitte to make sure all actual and potential pitfalls are identified."

The fire season is well and truly upon us. There have been almost 4000 fires since the start of the season. We've had severe and extreme days, Total Fire Bans, Emergency Warnings and, of course, fires.

CFA crews have responded to incidents across our state and over the border. We've gone in early, hit fires hard and made sure any threat has been contained. And the coming week will no doubt challenge us again.

I want to take a short detour from the business of the day to wish you all the best for the festive season and the coming New Year.

I've only been here a few months and I'm yet to see out my first summer, but I do feel like I'm beginning to understand what makes CFA tick. The veterans among you are probably tired of hearing that CFA is all about the people. I'm sure for many of you it's a well-worn cliché.

Do you remember that terrifying moment at school when you had to make a presentation to the class? Every kid was watching. The teacher was watching. It felt like time was standing still.

You spoke, you waited, you held your breath. What happened next generally depended on whether you chose to talk about something interesting, like the footy, or something that could sink you in three short minutes of desperately mumbled phrases; your pet dog's new kennel perhaps.