New NSW fire chief flags mental health focus and financial stability after recent turmoil
New South Wales’s incoming fire commissioner, Jeremy Fewtrell, has promised to focus on financial stability and the mental health of the state’s firefighters as he faces the further challenges of an extreme bushfire season and climate change.
Fewtrell, who takes up the role after his predecessor was sacked amid financial turmoil at Fire and Rescue NSW, also warned the upcoming bushfire season would be challenging, with some “periods of really intense activity”. “At the end of October, we’ve already had the best part of two months of some pretty extensive incidents,” he told Guardian Australia after his appointment by the minister for emergency services, Jihad Dib, on Monday. “So there’s a lot ahead of us still.”
Fewtrell said both Fire and Rescue NSW and the Rural Fire Service were “well prepared” for the summer ahead. On Monday, there were 72 active bush and grassfire warnings across the state.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup
Part of the agency’s response is to move resources from central Sydney to the fringe of the metropolitan area in preparation for the heightened risks of total fire ban days.
“We were tested in the extreme through 2019 and 2020,” Fewtrell said, with black summer bushfires proving the robustness and adaptability of firefighters “even when there’s multiple competing demands”.
They are skills that may serve firefighters well, given the impact of climate change, which he said “encompasses everything we do, really”, from bushfire risk to the way buildings and infrastructure are designed and built to withstand the impact of extreme weather.
“When there’s storms and extreme weather, we’re also the first ones helping the State Emergency Service. And so we see the impacts in so many different ways.”
Fewtrell becomes commissioner after the sacking of Paul Baxter in July. During Baxter’s six-year tenure, Fire and Rescue NSW reportedly spent $12m on consultants amid a rebrand and paid 650,000 hours of overtime during the 2021-22 financial year alone.
Fewtrell, who joined the service as a firefighter at the Balmain fire station in 1997, said he and his senior
colleagues would focus on making the organisation financially sustainable.
He will focus on overtime as a way to reduce soaring costs, “putting in place measures to try and bring that down to a more normal level and get things back on an even keel”.
Also high on his agenda are community engagement as part of a fire prevention strategy and a focus on the mental health of his staff, who “deal with some tragic and challenging situations”.
“We owe it to our people to provide them with the best possible support and care so that when they do finish their service, they’re not damaged by it,” he said.
The Fire Brigade Employees Union state secretary, Leighton Drury, said Fewtrell “inherits an agency that is damaged by a decade of underfunding, mismanagement and misplaced priorities”.
“With countless fire appliances either plagued with mechanical problems or past their service age, hundreds of fire stations not fit for purpose, an overstretched and underfunded fleet, training and properties teams, and a toxic culture, the new commissioner will certainly have his hands full in his new role,” Drury said in a statement. “We look forward to working with Commissioner Fewtrell on these challenges.”
Fewtrell said Fire and Rescue NSW was well placed to swiftly resolve any internal knocks to morale.
“The level of passion and commitment that all of our staff and particularly our firefighters have for the organisation – we do something really incredible every day and every night, and that’s an advantage that not many other organisations have,” he said.
“So while some people might have been a little bit disfranchised or dispirited, there’s a great potential there for us to turn around things very, very quickly.”