Fire phone anxiety
Northern Grampians community fire-fighting leaders remain fearful unreliable telecommunication services continue to threaten lives of people in bushfire-vulnerable farm and parkland.
Country Fire Authority representatives from Laharum, Brimpaen, Wonwondah and Green Lake districts are providing a united front in expressing frustration over the issue.
They are particularly concerned about poor northern Grampians mobilephone coverage services they believe have deteriorated further since January.
Northern Grampians is a farming and popular tourist region and has for the past decade had recognition as a service ‘blackspot’ zone.
Despite communication providers and authorities responding with technological upgrades in the area, telephone landlines continue to be the only reliable communication for many northern Grampians residents.
Laharum CFA captain Luke Dumesny said mobile service before January was ‘bearable’, but it was now ‘beyond a joke’.
“The problems begin even just to make a triple-zero call. If someone is out in the paddock, you have no chance of reaching them on your phone,” he said.
“We can manage the initial emergency call using our radios, but that’s just the start of our problems. What about organising equipment or personnel or anything collective fire services require in that sort of situation?”
Mr Dumesny said while eventually ‘word’ might get out to other CFA leaders and emergency services through assorted ‘word-of-mouth’ communication, managing the crisis would become ‘unthinkable’.
“Currently, we can’t be across any kind of evacuation situation, we won’t know who has decided to stay or leave, or where people at risk are,” he said.
He said with so many variables at play during a fire emergency, current telecommunication coverage could make some evacuations unpractical.
He said it might be too dangerous to send trucks and personnel into ‘risky’ situations without reliable and up-todate specific information.
Mr Dumesny also said the region’s poor service coverage rendered the State Government’s official Supplementary Alerting Service app for emergency services personnel partially useless.
The app, which uses mobile-phone data, can notify fire crews of emergencies, which brigades are responding to a blaze and their arrival estimates, as well as inter-cfa message capabilities and weather forecasts.
It has quickly become an important emergency-services communication tool since its State Government launch in 2020.
Mr Dumesny said the app’s main use was to alert fire crews in the region about incidents.
“The app just isn’t serviceable without mobile-network data and it might update whenever we luck-out with network coverage. So, while we aren’t flying completely blind in that regard, it is a lowest common denominator situation with the app. If everyone isn’t across the information at the same time, really, no-one is.”
Grampians CFA groups have in recent weeks raised concerns with Telstra regional general manager Steve Tinker as well as Federal Member for Mallee Anne Webster.
Mr Tinker and Dr Webster met with Grampians CFA leaders last week to discuss the mobile-coverage issues and fire-ready vulnerabilities of Grampians communities.
Mr Dumesny said it was the group’s first meeting with Mr Tinker and Telstra had promised to investigate reasons for poor coverage in the region.
Mr Dumesny said he was aware people were using the Optus network, which has a tower at Brimpaen, as well as Telstra and both were having similar issues. “We have raised the issue with Telstra and Anne Webster and now we will have to wait on direction in solving the broader problem,” he said.
“From a bushfire-management and CFA point of view, as well as from a community and farming perspective, we will do what we can to raise the issue and try and get the situation solved.”
Mr Dumesny said he appreciated Dr Webster’s ‘time and effort’ to meet with Grampians CFA leaders.
He said Northern Grampians communities still carried scars from bushfires that burnt through 52,000 hectares of bush and farming land in 2014.
“As a community we are trying everything possible to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Everything we can possibly do, to save life and property, is in play,” he said.
Mr Dumesny said he always kept his fire-alerting radio pager on ‘just in case’.
But he said there were not enough pagers available for all CFA members.
“Even a pager for every CFA member would not alleviate the fire-management shortfalls a lack of mobile service causes,” he said.
“You can’t expect every member to always carry a pager with them. And the pager will only alert them to a fire, not enable any fire management.”
Mr Dumesny said he hoped circumstances improved before the start of next fire season but emphasised that coverage issues limited all aspects of northern Grampians life.
“Even speaking from a farmer’s point of view, it impedes management of a business – or management of a local football club,” he said.
“Whether it be life or property under bushfire threat because of a lack of connectivity, whether it is a domesticviolence call, or a home emergency or a farming accident – lives could be at risk.
“And as a CFA captain, we are all volunteers, we don’t want to see anyone get hurt or have emergency services delayed, and we don’t want to put ourselves in danger either.”