It's time to show active support .
My local Rural Fire Service will be holding its first volunteer training session at its magnificently named "Wallaby Joe" facility.
Training starts at 6.30pm tonight.
I will be there....
Garry that is great. As I said to one neighbour who asked why I bothered joining the local volunteer fire unit, well if my house is on fire and your house is on fire and I am the only person with a fire hose which house do you think will be put out first? I was joking but seriously if people don't volunteer for these things they can't really complain if their own house does get burnt down.
The ACT has a thing called Community Fire Units CFU that I joined about 10 years ago, hopefully I never need to use my training but it is handy to have the experience. So far the only real action I have seen is standing with a fire hose filling up small 4WD tankers for the fire brigade that went up the hill to the fire, not really exciting but the fire bridge said it certainly helped put out the fire quicker. Pretty boring after a while but safer than being where the fire was and sometimes I prefer boring.
Each CFU has about 20 members and allocated to an area. For some reason they don't want us to go to other areas, we will only get called up if there is a fire in our area. I guess the good thing is I know where each hydrant is, how many hoses to join together to get behind the houses in each street within the area and what are some safe escape paths out if I have to save myself.
Each month we go around and clean out hydrants, if people have buried them under shrubs ask them politely to expose the hydrant, put notes on peoples cars if they park over a hydrant, when testing each hydrant we give the gardens nearby a nice water which in this drought makes people happy. I have also cleared some common areas that I thought were a fire hazard.
We have a petrol pump that we can put in a pond or swimming pool to suck out water that we test every couple of months. What gets me is for some reason no one older than me or younger than me know how to start it, I guess the older can't remember what a choke is and the younger have never seen one. Plus they stuff around on half throttle once it does start and the water they have primed it with runs out and it never starts sucking. I doubt we will ever have to use it for real as there is enough hydrants for us to reach into the bush behind all the houses - but if so I hope I am there if we do as generally I get it going and sucking pretty quickly.
