Young the epicentre of fires in the west
Published Date: 16 Jan 2013
Summary
The Young Witness
As fires blazed across NSW last week, personnel from the Rural Fire Services' (RFS) Young located at region west office worked day and night out of Sydney's State Operations Centre to protect the area.
Managing 19 local fire control centres in the region, the office oversees the large area's strategic operations, logistics, intelligence and volunteer training and conflict resolution.Many people in the community may not be aware the region west office – which incorporates 62 per cent of the state - is situated in our very own Lovell Street.
And whenever dangerous weather is predicted, four staff members from the office form a Major Incident Coordination Team (MIC) to represent the area at Homebush's state-of-the-art purpose built emergency operations centre.
There they work alongside state operations staff, MICs teams from the other three regions, state emergency agencies such as the police, media support, rapid aerial response teams and experts from places such as the Bureau of Meteorology, the Department of Primary Industries and Telstra.
This is all while they stay in constant phone contact with on- ground district staff, giving them up-to-date fire behaviour analysis and relaying intelligence back from them to the state operation staff to get volunteers the resources and equipment they need to put out fires.
Region west regional manager Paul Smith said for last week's fires they prepared as well as they could, putting volunteers on a high state of alert.
"We knew the weather was going to be bad and, as the commissioner said, the worse conditions on record," he said.
They put a pre-emptive declaration in place, giving fire fighters access to additional resources and powers to take control of any fires, began a media campaign to inform the public and declared a state-wide total fire ban.
"The public responded extremely well to our warnings," Mr Smith said.
"What we know from Victoria's tragic experience was that the public need to be informed about what and where the fires are and what they're doing.
"So we try really hard to keep that information as up-to-date and accessible as possible."
Mr Smith said he loves his job at the region west office, which he's managed since 2006.
"It's a great organisation to work for – the volunteers are fantastic and at the heart of what we do, volunteers do it out of the goodness of their hearts," he said.
For information on how to make a bushfire survival plan, visit www.rfs.nsw.gov.auand to find out whether a fire is close by using an android mobile device download the Fires Near Me app."The most rewarding thing is every day is a different thing we could have a fire one day to working out problems with people, to floods the next day," Mr Smith said.
