Country firies feel 'second class' | Ipswich News | Local News in Ipswich

Photos

Aerial photos of Rockhampton fires

View Photo Gallery »

RURAL fire crews say they are being treated as second class citizens compared to their city firefighting colleagues.

Graham McNicol of the Marburg District Rural Fire Brigade said the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service was making a bad fire season worse due to “bureaucratic mismanagement”.

“Rural firefighters are being treated as second class fire fighters,” Mr McNicol said.

He said that at a recent fire at Mt Forbes, the local brigade was initially the incident controller but was told that because a house was under threat, the urbans would take over control.

“The urbans had no knowledge of the area and what should have been only a burnt area of 100 acres (40 hectares) ended up burning out 500 acres (202ha),” he said.

“This may not seem important to urban crews but it was to the land holder who will now have to buy feed for his cattle and replace fences needlessly lost.”

Mr McNicol said the QFRS communications centre, known as firecom, was not able to handle the number of calls to direct crews.

“There was a fire at Grandchester and, instead of paging Marburg or Mt Forbes, which are the two neighbouring communities, firecom called in Prenzlau, which is in a different shire and Marburg had three trucks available for turn-out.”

Geoff King from the Rural Fire Brigade Association of Queensland (RFBAQ) backed Mr McNicol's claims.

“I don't care what anybody says, you can't beat local knowledge on bushfires,” Mr King said.

“At the present time we've got fires all over the place and people are running around like chooks with their heads cut off.

“I don't know what we can do. There will be a catastrophe if something isn't done.”

“When you talk to the big wigs in QFRS, they agree with you then they go away and do nothing about it. Everyone covers their own behind.”

Paul Adcock, QFRS Acting Assistant for Rural Operations, tried to hose down the rural firefighters' complaints.

“I've asked our regional offices to look into it and they said it was their understanding that operations doctrines were followed.

“The operations doctrine dictates how a response is followed but some rural brigades don't know where they fit it.

“This is not a state-wide issue, it's an isolated issue. Volunteers play a very important role; they're not being excluded in any way.”