Volunteer firefighters say training gaps are leaving rural brigades exposed during high-risk scenarios

“Human nature is, if we’re not practicing something every day, we lose that skill set.”

Warrnambool Fire Brigade training officer Aaron Huttig knows from his 20 years of experience that when bushfires intensify, it’s all hands on deck.

But some volunteer firefighters like Huttig say the difference in training between rural units and larger town brigades can leave gaps – especially when emergencies involve gas, transmission, hazardous materials and industrial sites.

Varying levels: Huttig believes the current system for training CFA volunteers doesn’t always adequately prepare them for the callouts they may attend. 

• “We are trained and taught to certain extents,” Huttig told the West Vic Brolga. “There are different types of dangers, and the different levels of training are based on your brigade.”

Just the basics: According to Huttig, a lot of brigades are trained at a “very basic level”, because their risk profile consists of only grass and scrub fires due to their rural locations - these are known colloquially among the CFA as “tin shed brigades”. 

🗣️“Warrnambool has a much higher level of training, because the risk profile here in town has major industrial institutions, lots of gas problems, hazardous materials and leaks; the Hamilton brigade is exactly the same with volunteers there,” Huttig said. 

Some of the tin shed brigades “get taught once when they do their minimum skills,” said Huttig. “I understand that a lot of brigades might only do three or four callouts per year, so they're not needing to train every week”.

Protocols without refreshing: As a result, he said the protocols on “how to fight these sorts of fires underneath those sorts of dangers, gets forgotten about by the members, or they're not 100 percent sure”. 

• “They're not going to do a training package just to learn about how to fight fires under power lines, in that respect, because there's multiple risks they need to look at.”

More training: Volunteers sometimes receive “awareness packages” - educational resources or training modules designed by the CFA to increase knowledge and preparedness regarding specific fire or safety risks.

“But a lot of the time, these sorts of information packages are very slow to get created, and it takes a lot of resources from the CFA corporate side,” Huttig said. 

“When you learn something, theoretically you've learned it, and it's well and good. But human nature is, if we're not practicing something every day, we lose that skill set.” 

Although training levels are varied, when a callout occurs, it’s “all hands on deck”, but someone with specific training and experience is likely to be at the helm, leading brigades.

“That's where the CFA is very strong: it pulls resources and knowledge from multiple sources,” Huttig said. 

Delegation based on size: When fires reach a size that means they can't be led from the ground, Huttig said delegation is handed to the CFA or the Forest Fire Management Victoria control centre for medium‑sized fires, or the Incident Control Centre for large fires. 

“At that very high level, we have people looking for those sorts of dangers [powerlines, hazardous trees, etc],” he said. 

“For those high voltage power lines, it's drilled into the basic training fairly early on that you don't fight fires underneath high voltage power lines - the issue being that the smoke and dust is a great conduit for electricity to jump from the power lines to the ground, and if you're in that area, you might get zapped.”

To combat powerlines on typical West Vic landscapes, Huttig said “you need to try and contain the head of the fire before the power lines, or just wait for it to burn underneath and come out the other side”. 

Training, packages, and assist: Huttig said the solution to having better prepared firefighters was “multi-pronged”, including “additional training awareness packages … to assist brigades”.

Brigades generally meet at least once a year to train to the minimum standard set by the CFA chief officer, and Huttig said training in those sessions focused on hazardous trees and how to respond if a blaze engulfs the fire truck.

“The question is whether we could also do that for electrical work,” said Huttig, who also suggested sharing more information via the CFA’s intranet.

Australia’s increasingly erratic weather conditions add urgency. The Bureau of Meteorology's 2020 State of the Climate Report recorded 33 days nationally that exceeded 39C in 2019, more than the numbers recorded from 1960 to 2018 combined (24 days in 58 years).

In Victoria, more than 51,000 people volunteer at a CFA brigade, with about 1,200 on the CFA payroll. As for career firefighters, FRV employs roughly 4,500 people, and FFMVic has about 1,000 permanent firefighters.

Header image: VEMTC Penshurst Training Campus