The CEO is asking:
What is making it harder for brigades to deliver services to the community? What would make it easier for brigades to deliver services, particularly around community safety programs?
You can pre-submit questions by emailing onlineforum@cfa.vic.gov.au, or just login below and ask them during the chat.
THE ONLINE Q & A WILL BE TAKING PLACE IN THE WINDOW BELOW:
Questions and comments received so far include:
Barry Knight from Lara:
“I believe asking councils to take into account when planning and building roundabout’s at major intersections that at times become grid locked with known problems such as rail crossings on one leg or school crossings that hold up traffic, to add in slip lanes in order for incoming brigade members to traverse the roundabout in the side slip lane in order to get to the fire station on turnout.”
Greg McManus from Lara:
“…In relation to providing better community education we need to be able to make use of CFA supplied paid resources more easily, my brigade had a CSF that helped us deliver this but this was taken away due to political reasons, our BASO is not allowed to help us with that sort of work and I am still waiting to see if the Volunteer Support Officers will be allowed to do this. Helping to remove any administrative or paper work burdens needs to be looked into as well. I think the CFA could make much better use of on-line based reporting and forms to simplify most tasks and do a review of current admin functions to see if they add any value, if they are not adding value then get rid of them."
Peter Anliker:
“Up-to-date information materials ready for distribution in sufficient quantities at Brigade/District level in pre-season (early October)already, not coming in in drips and drabs during the fire season or in the worst case scenario, as it happened in the past, “Brigade Information Kit” available towards the end of the (bush)fire season only.”
Daniel Eshuis from Warragul:
"Something that was suggested at CFA Gippsland's Community Engagement Forum on the weekend was that the current SDS model doesn't actually measure our success very well. It measures how quickly we respond, but that is after the fact, i.e. after a fire starts.
The 8 minutes (using Hazard Class II as an example) is 8 minutes from time of page, based on the fact it takes 8 minutes for a room to flash over (from an old study, circa 1930??). Perhaps a better way to measure Service Delivery is to measure what we saved. This could be in $ value of the property that the brigade saved after arriving on scene.
Another measure, which encapsulates the new structure of CFA, is in the life & $ value of what was saved by CFA overall, starting with Community Engagement and how we empowered the property owners to protect their property in the first place. For instance, having a working smoke alarm installed saved 3 lives in Warragul in the space of a week, leading up to Daylight Savings.
Rather than just focus on how quickly the brigade arrived and what we did to save the house, we used the fact that they had working smoke alarms which are credited with preventing almost certain fatalities, and put the word out about what a simple $10 smoke alarm had done.
I'd love to see more emphasis placed on Community Engagement, as we can save more lives through helping people prepare for and/or prevent fires, than by having more trucks & firefighters.”
The next session will be at 6pm on Wednesday 13 June with Acting Chief Officer Steve Warrington. CFA members are encouraged to email topic suggestions to onlineforum@cfa.vic.gov.au.
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