Going like blazes at training: rural firefighters gearing up for fire season

Canobolas Zone Rural Fire Service technical officer Geoff Selwood said the training day was to prepare rural firefighters for the upcoming fire season and to bring them up to date on new technology and techniques.

About 80 Canobolas Zone volunteers from Lucknow, Clifton Grove, Ophir, Lidster, Towac, Borenore, Mullion Creek, March, Springside and the Orange Molong Road station took part in the exercises.

Mr Selwood said the Orange and Canobolas region could face a bad fire season due to winter rainfall and people should start clearing the areas around their home.

He said as it gets warmer people also need to be more cautious when welding or using angle grinders to avoid starting a grassfire.

Although much of Sunday’s training was practical based he said social media is also becoming more prevalent so a communications session was also included in the training day. 

“We were looking for people to give precise and correct informative reports when they get to a scene so we can feed the machine, they feed the information in to us and we put it into our reporting systems and that’s what comes up on the apps,” Mr Selwood said.

He said its relevance was proved when a grassfire started at Clifton Grove.

“As soon as the smoke went up the questions started to fire up [on social media], if the RFS doesn’t update it people start panicking and the phones start ringing,” Mr Selwood said.

Other exercises included a scenario of a car accident involving a potentially fatal chemical spill based on chemicals found on farms.

There was also a session about what to do when there is fibro asbestos in a house during a house fire as well as a pumping exercise using multiple fire trucks at Lake Canobolas.

“Sometime you need it [pumping skills] if there’s a fire at someone’s house and you need to pump water up from a dam,” Mr Selwood said.

tanya.marschke@fairfaxmedia.com.au