Fire Call Out to Scone

THE local rural fire services respond to approximately 60 call outs a year, but now they hope the people of Scone will respond to their call out for support and said shift workers would be ideal.

Brett Wright, senior deputy captain of the Kingdon Ponds Rural Fire Service said most of the current local volunteers hold down full time jobs and the more volunteers they have the better they can respond to emergencies.

Andrew Sowter, Brett Wright, Daryl Hunter, Dave Coe and Belinda Sowter from Parkville and Kingdon Ponds Fire Services.

“People are not expected to respond to every call out, you can do as little or as much as you want there is no set roster,” said Mr Wright.

“We have about 30 on the books at the moment and about half a dozen who are active,” he said.

“Day time during the week is the most difficult.

“That’s where shift workers would be great because you usually find some may be working and others might be off, so if you have enough you might have three or four who aren’t working out of say 15.

“Anyone would be great, male, female, shift workers, unemployed they can all be part of the team,” he said.

“We like to have four or five in the truck when we respond and in a town this size you’d think we’d easily have enough people to do that but it is really sad considering the population and how much it is needed by the community,” Mr Wright said.

The only compulsory training required to become a volunteer is a basic bush fire fighter course, there also a short safety induction and volunteer induction.

“Once you have done the basic bush fire fighter course you can go on the truck,” said Brett Wright.

“It takes two weekends, but even that is changing so that you can do all the theory stuff online at your own pace and then you can be assessed by an assessor and do the practical things in one day,” he said.

If you can respond to the call out from the Kingdon Ponds or Parkville Rural Fire Service units please phone the Liverpool Plains region office at Willow Tree: 02 6747 1493.