Firefighters sign up for unfamiliar territory
FORTH Valley carpenter Daniel Green is one of 30 volunteers in the midst of being trained up for remote area firefighting.
Remote area firefighters access difficult terrain by helicopter or on foot, and use special lightweight pumps or hand tools to fight bushfires before they spread.
Mr Green has been a volunteer firefighters with the Tasmania Fire Service
JESSICA HOWARD
for just nine months, but was keen to put his hand up for the extra specialist training.
“It’s a good opportunity to have a go at something not everyone gets a chance to have a go at and to help out the community,” he said.
“We’re told as volunteers that our personal life comes first so it’s a case of fitting it in with your own life as best you can.”
The 30 new volunteers join an existing 100 career remote area firefighters in the TFS plus 80 in the Parks and Wildlife Service.
Police, Fire and Emergency Management Minister Mark Shelton said advice for the upcoming bushfire season was anticipated to be normal.
“Last year, the fire season was early and as we know there’s been significant rain, particularly on the east coast and south east, which has dampened the ground and allowed green grass to grow and that’s delayed [the start of] the fire season,” he said.
Mr Shelton said fuel reduction crews had burned through approximately 27,000ha across the state earlier this year, with more to come in spring.
He said discussions were under way to develop the protocols around bringing in interstate firefighters if necessary and whether they would need to quarantine.
TFS acting district officer of air operations Matt Lowe said there would be an extra five aircraft available this season, including an aerial intelligence gathering helicopter, which would feed back real time information to the incident control centre.
“The chief’s mantra is ‘weight of attack’ so we hit the fires with aircraft and then we deploy a remote area crew so they can get a quick hold on those fires and extinguish them before they grow,” he said.