Our quiet heroes

WHEN Little River captain Terry Hedt started his four decades of service with the country brigade, Help Is On Its Way was top of the pops.

The 1977 hit from the Little River Band has been the soundtrack to his career and countless other volunteers.

Our unpaid heroes are always at the scene of a raging bushfire or building blaze as fast as they can.

But times are changing and it’s getting harder for the CFA to attract young blood to the rankand-file membership in some communities.

“We’ve got our 80th birthday coming up next month and one of our former secretaries was just given a medal for 60 years of service,” Mr Hedt told the Geelong Advertiser.

“We’ve seen a lot of fires over my time here, the Lara bushfires in 1969 and all that but it’s definitely changed now. We’re not the group of farmers like we used to be.”

New CFA data showed that Little River was the only volunteer brigade in Greater Geelong to meet their response time targets more than 90 per cent of the time, seeing them dispatch to emergency calls quicker than other unpaid brigades across the region.

Of the 13 main stations in the Greater Geelong area – four career and nine volunteer – only four met their response time targets more than 90 per cent of the time for the quarter ending June 2017.

Rural districts around Geelong’s suburban fringe have changed dramatically during the past decade.

No longer are they mainly covered by family farms. with “lifestyle” blocks and holiday homes popping up around the countryside.

Long-serving CFA members are either retiring or slowing down after decades of loyal service.

We need a strong CFA and our firefighting force are only as strong as its membership base.

More Geelong region residents need to follow the great example of Terry Hedt and the countless other volunteers who put their lives on the line each and every summer.

Volunteer today.