Fire boss denies 4WD safety risk

The fire-fighters’ union is claiming that public safety has been compromised by a management decision to send four-wheel-drive vehicles home with senior officers rather than garage them at stations.

United Firefighters Union state president Steve Bunney said the dual-cab utilities were used by fire-fighters to reach fires in otherwise inaccessible areas, and for carting rescue equipment to accidents on the North Shore.

Mr Bunney said the decision about six weeks ago to give the utes to senior officers to use left local fire-fighters without a four-wheel-drive to access a grassfire backing on to the Noosa National Park at Sunrise Beach on August 17.

He said the relevant senior officer with the four-wheel-drive was three hours away at a meeting, and it took some time to get a rural fire brigade four-wheel-drive in, that then got bogged.

“It was one of those days when it all went wrong,” Mr Bunney said.

“It was only a small fire and it took eight appliances to respond.”

UFU Sunshine Coast president Shane Pasterfield described the re-allocation of four-wheel-drives, which had been based at Noosa, Nambour and Torquay stations, as poor resourcing.

“They are providing vehicles for senior officers to take home at night and on weekends when they are not even on call,” he said.

Mr Pasterfield said one four-wheel-drive should be available to the on-call senior officer, “and at all other times, the cars garaged at stations in case they are needed”.

Queensland Fire Service north coast assistant commissioner Ray Eustace said the four-wheel-drives were only ever intended as multi-purpose transport and never as first-response vehicles, and their use had not fundamentally changed.

Mr Eustace said one ute was being used by the acting director of a newly created Gympie-Noosa area and the others were being used by training and safety officers, and a replacement four-wheel-drive utility was on order for Noosa station.

He denied the use of the vehicles by the officers had reduced firefighting capacity on the Sunshine Coast.

“If an officer wants to go across and/or off-road, then they can always call on the rural fire service trucks which are four-wheel-drive and lightweight,” Mr Eustace said.

However, Mr Pasterfield said that while the use of the vehicles had not changed in theory, their availability was now limited and rural vehicles could not respond as quickly because they were manned by volunteers who had to leave jobs and other duties in emergencies.