Fire

Firefighting is and will remain a cornerstone in our service delivery, responding to over 22,222 fire related emergency calls within San Andreas in 2018/2019.  We have a duty to take all practicable measures for preventing and extinguishing fires to protect and save life and property in the event of a fire in any fire district. We also have the capability to fight all types of fires, including structure fires, bush and grass fires, transport fires, and flammable liquid fires and we excel in the suppression of all forms of fire, in order to minimise death, injury, property loss, and economic disruption in any community.

We undertake prescribed hazard reduction burns, reducing the bushfire risk for properties and supporting the San Andreas Rural Fire Service during and after bushfires in San Andreas. We also work to prevent the occurrence of bushfires through other hazard reduction strategies and community education campaigns.

Importantly, we use our firefighting knowledge to educate the community on fire safety and prevention. This is done through school and targeted community visits, plus through campaigns such as home fire safety checks. And after a fire, firefighters assist the public to recover from fires by providing information for householders, and, for major emergencies, through rapid damage assessment.

 HAZMAT

We are the lead agency for hazardous material incidents on land and inland waterways within San Andreas. We are responsible for protecting and saving life and property endangered by hazardous material incidents, confining or ending such an incident, and rendering the site safe from hazardous substances or dangerous goods, to chemical, biological, radiation or nuclear (CBRN) incidents, to environmental threats, such as a milk tanker spilling its load into a watercourse.

In 2018/2019 we responded to 16,567 hazardous (HAZMAT) material incidents ranging from industrial accidents through to deliberate release acts that confronted the community. We are able to immediately respond and deal with minor or small-scale HAZMAT incidents, sometimes in conjunction with firefighting or rescue operations. 

Prevention + Education

We engage closely with our communities to reduce their risk and increase their resilience to fire and emergencies by developing and delivering a range of community safety initiatives and prevention programs. We also undertake ground-breaking research and benchmark our performance against international standards in injury and property loss prevention.

 Rescue

As the state’s lead agency of rescue services, we responded to 13,402 non-fire related calls in 2018/2019.  All firefighters are trained to confidently undertake the rescue incidents that confront them. We are deployable interstate and overseas and are recognised as a world leader in road accident rescue and our Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) specialists are the primary responders to disasters and major emergency incidents such as earthquakes, train crashes, cliff face rescues, rescue from heights, building collapse and complex rescues. We are the only agency in San Andreas with Rescue Technicians trained to tunnel into collapsed structures, cut through concrete and steel, and use sophisticated electronic search devices.

We partner with other agencies to ensure communities receive a seamless and professional service.

 Counter Terrorism

We maintain our operational preparedness to manage the consequences of terrorist acts particularly those involving fires, explosions, building collapse, and chemical, biological or radiological agents, as part of an integrated whole-of-government counter-terrorism strategy. We have hosted and/or participated in numerous multi-agency counter-terrorism training exercises that focus on exercising the risk.

In the event of a terrorist attack, we play a critical role in countering the effects of terrorism through our response capabilities, including structural collapse rescue, firefighting, HAZMAT clean-up and support of other emergency services at incidents involving mass casualties.