Page 518 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 13 February 2013
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The completion of the ESA headquarters, communications centre, media briefing room and new workshop located at Fairbairn business park, Majura, has been accomplished and can be credited as the most significant enhancement to the way ESA and support service personnel operate within ESA headquarters. For the first time, all ESA support personnel have been integrated to work in the ESA’s Fairbairn premises. The completion of the purpose-built ESA training facility, located at Hume, in May 2012 also provides multiservice training facilities for ESA staff and volunteers.
In addition, the ACT Rural Fire Service heli-base was completed in time for the 2011-12 bushfire season. The heli-base has the capacity to house three helicopters and has crew facilities that include meeting rooms and accommodation quarters, if needed, during extended operations. This facility has been used extensively during the current fire season and was the base for up to 17 helicopters that were responding to fires in the ACT and surrounding New South Wales during January this year. This facility is the only one of its kind in southern New South Wales and is a significant investment in firefighting capability for the ACT.
The ACT Rural Fire Service’s main focus over the current bushfire season has been responding to the prolonged heatwave by ensuring that incident management teams are in place during total fire bans, ensuring that appropriate levels of fire appliances and crews are stood up and supporting New South Wales with a number of fires in the surrounding New South Wales bushfire zones.
It is pleasing to hear that there has been a surge in firefighting volunteers. Since the beginning of this year, the ACT Rural Fire Service has received 241 registrations of interest from people wanting to become an RFS volunteer. The total number of skilled RFS volunteers was 512 as of 6 February 2013.
We should also recognise the contributions of the ACT Fire and Rescue personnel as an essential and critical component of fire suppression in and around the ACT, not just in support of the ACT Rural Fire Service. This is evidenced by the deployment of ACT Fire and Rescue personnel to fight the large fires in the surrounding New South Wales region during the January fire weather days.
In a world first, Canberra researchers—including Dr Jason Sharples, who is also an RFS volunteer; Stephen Wilkes, a fire management officer with TAMS; and Rick McRae and Alan Walker from the ESA’s specialist risk analysis and spatial information team—documented the world’s first confirmed case of a fire tornado, using evidence collected from the devastating 2003 Canberra bushfires. This study, published in the scientific journal Natural Hazards, provides insight into the behaviour of thunderstorms that form over large fires, which is currently the subject of an international research effort.
The government released the strategic bushfire management plan, version 2, in October 2009. The development of this plan included consideration of the interim findings of the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, the coronial inquiry into the 2003 Canberra bushfires and a national framework for scaled bushfire advice and
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