Mayor tells Industrial Relations Commission seconds matters in a fire

Cr Greenhill was appearing as a witness for the Fire Brigade Employees' Union who are fighting a proposal in the Commission to temporarily shut down a number of Blue Mountains fire stations when there are staff shortages.

Cr Greenhill called the proposal "offensive".

"Any potential diminution of resources in the Blue Mountains is offensive. My concern is the policy approach of the [NSW] government has given the [Fire] Commissioner less to work with," he said.

The Union has said Fire and Rescue NSW had "been trying for some time to implement an order which would allow Blackheath, Glenbrook, Lawson, Mt Victoria and Wentworth Falls Fire and Rescue Stations to be temporarily taken off-line [TOL] in the event of a staffing shortage". The union said these Mountains sites are on "a list" from ones around the state, because FRNSW believes an adjoining station can sufficiently cover the area.

The Commission was told by Fire and Rescue NSW counsel that there are 22 stations on a TOL list NSW-wide. This could relate to seven appliances in the Mountains under the proposal.

In his statement Cr Greenhill, recounted the disastrous 2013 Blue Mountains bushfires and said "seconds, not minutes", mattered in that Links View, Springwood fire, when "homes were lost in 10 minutes". In the aftermath of those fires the community lost around 200 homes, with many more damaged. Some 700 people were left homeless.

The Commission heard under the Blue Mountains Bushfire Risk Management Plan 2013 on average "the region has 28 bushfires a year and up to seven of these can be classified as 'major'." Cr Greenhill said "with a changing climate, the Blue Mountains are especially vulnerable".

Cr Greenhill said on Jan 15, 2020, property valuer Anna Porter said, "Insurance and banks can shy away from lending money or providing cover to those areas [including the Blue Mountains] at a reasonable price and they either won't provide lending or insurance cover or they will premium load it. I fear that when the insurers hear about FRNSW's plan to TOL [take off line] station [s] in the Mountains, insurance premiums will simply go up and make life more unaffordable for residents."

Cr Greenhill said the Mountains was the most bushfire prone area of Australia and needed a "bolstered fire service".

"It is my expectation as the local mayor that the Blue Mountains be removed from this proposal completely, to make sure that every single fire appliance sitting in stations is ready to respond to any incident. I would expect that the elected representatives of any other council impacted would have the same view."

A day before [Tuesday September 21] under cross examination by barrister Janet McDonald, the counsel for Fire and Rescue NSW, a Central Coast firefighter, Mick Stone, responded to several hours of questioning about risk probability and resourcing in relation to community and firefighter safety.

Mr Stone had earlier supplied documents giving different scenarios about Fire and Rescue responses when stations had reduced staff.

FRNSW counsel queried Mr Stone about how firefighters responded to fires when resourcing was low: "Firefighters are trained not to enter a burning building without proper back-up?" she asked. "If the status was showing you did not have back-up for 30 minutes you wouldn't enter, correct?"

But Mr Stone countered: "Every incident is different. Why limit anything, why not just leave the stations there." He added: "I don't think the risk assessments [for tolling stations] are adequate. If they can toll [take them off line] them, they [senior management] will toll them, it saves money. We shouldn't be tolling any stations. I'm still on a truck, we need more fire stations not less."

The Fire and Rescue counsel said the "evidence you give about these scenarios are quite speculative" and suggested Mr Stone was sticking to the union argument regardless of questions, which he denied.

"Ten minutes is a long time [in a fire]," he said. "I think the people of NSW deserve coverage, taxpayers deserve it. In ten minutes it can keep a fire in the bedroom, another ten minutes you lose the whole house."

In the lead up to the latest hearing, Fire Brigade Employees' Union (FBEU) state secretary Martin Dixon told the Gazette that taking any station offline deprived a community of a critical emergency response.

"If Fire and Rescue really wanted to keep communities safe, they would scrap this plan. It doesn't pass the pub test and it will leave communities worse off.

Mr Dixon said with the NSW population growing by more than 100,000 annually the government needed to increase services instead of shutting stations to save money.

But Fire and Rescue NSW Deputy Commissioner, Jeremy Fewtrell said they were "committed to keeping communities safe".

"The practice of taking fire trucks temporarily off-line is partly a result of changing demographics, improvements in technology, and a more modern understanding of fire safety and risks.

Commissioner Fewtrell said FRNSW "uses a risk-based approach to manage the readiness of its emergency service delivery" and has an "established procedure of managing all of its on-call fire stations".

"These decisions are based on data, including ongoing incident response coverage of the area by other nearby appliances," he said. "Each fire truck and its crew is a mobile resource available to respond wherever it is needed ... independent of a fixed fire station location."

This matter is being heard before Commissioner Sloan in the Industrial Relations Commission. It has been relisted for October 20-21 with verbal submissions on December 17.