External links
 | This article relating to the Australian Capital Territory is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Community Fire Units (CFUs) are volunteer teams of residents who are trained as preliminary responders to bushfires in the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales until the fire brigade arrives and in bushfire prevention. They are not to be confused with Volunteer Fire and Bushfire Brigades, which usually have vehicles and stations and are equipped for significant fire suppression duties.
Reduce the impact of bushfires on the community and to protect life and property from bushfires.
The Community Fire Units are not by any means intended to replace traditional professional and volunteer fire brigades. The CFUs are intended only to take proactive action to prevent danger to property and lives and to act in the interim to respond to a fire emergency until the fire brigade arrive. The CFUs are in a sense to the Fire Brigade what Neighbourhood Watch is to the police.
CFUs are typically equipped with an inventory of essential fire fighting equipment, often in a trailer. These can include hoses and hydrants, bush clearing tools, protecting clothing and communications devices. Unlike brigades, CFUs have no permanent vehicles or station, relying on the resources of volunteers.
Fire and Rescue NSW maintains 600 CFUs and more than 7,000 volunteer members across metropolitan and regional NSW. [1]
A few NSW Rural Fire Service Brigades also maintain their own CFUs. Members of these CFUs are also members of the specific rural fire brigade. They are trained in basic fire safety and fighting and who can assist the Fire Brigade in case of fire emergencies and other incidents. [2]
ACT Fire and Rescue maintains 50 CFUs with about 850 volunteer members. [3] The disastrous 2003 Canberra bushfires impacted significant urban areas of the city of Canberra, destroying over 400 homes and killing four people. The ACT Government introduced a similar program of CFUs based on the NSW model. Communities organise volunteers to form local units who on application, may receive a community fire fighting unit trailer with fire fighting equipment and the appropriate clothing and protective equipment for each volunteer. In the ACT, CFU volunteers are identified by blue clothing, to distinguish from the fire brigade's yellow attire.
| | This article relating to the Australian Capital Territory is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
A volunteer fire department (VFD) is a fire department of volunteers who perform fire suppression and other related emergency services for a local jurisdiction. Volunteer and retained (on-call) firefighters are expected to be on call to respond to emergency calls for long periods of time, and are summoned to the fire station when their services are needed. They are also expected to attend other non-emergency duties as well.
The 2003 Canberra bushfires caused severe damage to the suburbs and outer areas of Canberra, the capital city of Australia, during 18–22 January 2003. Almost 70% of the Australian Capital Territory's (ACT) pastures, pine plantations, and nature parks were severely damaged, and most of the Mount Stromlo Observatory was destroyed. After burning for a week around the edges of the ACT, the fires entered the suburbs of Canberra on 18 January 2003. Over the next ten hours, four people died, over 490 were injured, and 470 homes were destroyed or severely damaged, requiring a significant relief and reconstruction effort.
The Country Fire Authority (CFA) is a volunteer fire service responsible for fire suppression, rescues, and response to other accidents and hazards across most of the state Victoria, Australia. CFA comprises over 1,200 brigades organised in 21 districts, and shares responsibility for fire services with Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV), which employs full-time paid firefighters in major urban areas; and Forest Fire Management Victoria (FFMV), which manages fire prevention and suppression on Victoria's public lands. CFA operations and equipment are partly funded by the Victorian Government through its Fire Services Levy, and supplemented by individual brigades' fundraising for vehicles and equipment.
The South Australian Country Fire Service is a volunteer based fire service in the Australian state of South Australia. The CFS has responsibility as the Control Agency for firefighting, rescues and hazardous materials and inland waterways in the country regions of South Australia. Its official mission is "To protect life, property and the environment from fire and other emergencies whilst protecting and supporting our personnel and continuously improving."
The New South Wales Rural Fire Service is a volunteer-based firefighting agency and statutory body of the Government of New South Wales.
The Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) is a government department that is responsible for fire and emergency services in Western Australia. The department came into being in 2012 as a result of the Perth Hills Bush Fire review. DFES is responsible for the management, training and funding of career and volunteer Services including:
Mount Riverview is a town off the Great Western Highway about 2 km NE of Blaxland in the Lower Blue Mountains, New South Wales, 70 kilometres west of the Sydney CBD, Australia. At the 2006 census, Mount Riverview had a population of 2,993 people.
The New Zealand Fire Service was New Zealand's main firefighting body from 1 April 1976 until 1 July 2017 – at which point it was dissolved and incorporated into the new Fire and Emergency New Zealand.
NSW Ambulance, previously the Ambulance Service of NSW, is an agency of NSW Health and the statutory provider of pre-hospital emergency care and ambulance services in the state of New South Wales, Australia.
Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) previously known as NSW Fire Brigades (NSWFB), is an agency of the Government of New South Wales, Australia. FRNSW is responsible for firefighting, rescue and HazMat services in the major cities, metropolitan areas and towns across New South Wales. Fire and Rescue NSW is the fourth largest urban fire service in the world, with over 6,800 firefighters serving at 335 fire stations throughout the state, supported by 465 administrative and trades staff and 5,700 community fire unit volunteers. FRNSW are the busiest fire service in Australia, attending over 124,000 incidents a year.
As firefighting has a rich history throughout the world, traditions in this profession vary widely from country to country.
Philip Christian Koperberg, is the Chairman of the New South Wales Emergency Management Committee, responsible for advising the New South Wales government on emergency response strategies, since 2011.
St John Ambulance New South Wales is a charitable organisation dedicated to helping people in sickness, distress, suffering or danger. It provides first aid training and event and community health care services. It is part of an international organisation that consists of eight Priories that form the Order of St John. The organisation is sometimes incorrectly referred to "St John's Ambulance" or "St Johns Ambulance" instead of "St John Ambulance".
Northern Territory Fire and Rescue Service, or NTFRS, is the primary provider of fire and rescue services throughout the 1.35 million square km Northern Territory of Australia. It is made up of 27 fire stations, 16 being staffed by volunteer brigade units, 5 being staffed 24 hours a day by career fire fighters, and the remainder by a mix of career and auxiliary fire fighters.
Firefighting in the United States dates back to the earliest European colonies in the Americas. Early firefighters were simply community members who would respond to neighborhood fires with buckets. The first dedicated volunteer fire brigade was established in 1736 in Philadelphia. These volunteer companies were often paid by insurance companies in return for protecting their clients.
The Newham Fire Brigade is a volunteer firefighting service located in Newham, Victoria at 1293 Rochford Road. The brigade is often referred to as the Newham CFA and was formerly known as the Newham Rural Fire Brigade. The brigade is part of the Mount Macedon Group in the Lodden-Mallee Region of the Country Fire Authority. Newham is located in the Macedon Ranges, which is one of Victoria's popular holiday spots and has a risk of bushfire during the summer months.
The ACT Rural Fire Service is a branch of the Australian Capital Territory Emergency Services Agency. It is responsible for the prevention, detection and extinguishment of all bushfires within the ACT, as well as assisting the other branches of ESA.
Windellama is a rural locality in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia in the Goulburn Mulwaree Council. It is northeast of Canberra and southeast of Goulburn. At the 2021 census, it had a population of 417. Windellama is a popular location for people from Sydney to make a "tree change". This has created a change in property sizes in the area, previously mostly large agricultural enterprises, now on a multitude of 50-100 acre hobby farms.
The Munich Fire Department is the firefighting authority of the City of Munich. The Munich fire department is divided into a professional department with approximately 1500 fire fighters staffing a total of 10 fire stations located strategically throughout the city to meet the legal aid period of 10 Minutes, and a volunteer fire department, whose approximately 1,050 members are organized in 22 companies. Each year, the Munich Fire Department responds to about 80,000 calls. The volunteers respond to about 3,500 calls annually. This makes the Munich Fire Department the third largest fire department as well as the largest municipal fire department in Germany.
The 2018 Tathra bushfire was a bushfire that burned between 18 and 19 March 2018 and primarily affected parts of the South Coast region in the Australian state of New South Wales. The fire, understood to have been caused by a failure in electrical infrastructure, began in the locality of Reedy Swamp, near Tarraganda, which spread east towards Tathra in the municipality of the Bega Valley Shire.