Fireys using pen and paper as technology fails following cyberattack

Technology outages are still forcing Fire Rescue Victoria to turn to pen, paper and pagers for hours at a time, 2½ years after a cyberattack damaged the emergency service systems.

The agency is investigating the cause of the latest series of outages that repeatedly shut systems down this week, but the United Firefighters Union says the problem is recurrent and risking public safety. Fire Rescue Victoria denies the problems have endangered public safety.

Fire Rescue Victoria suffered a cyberattack in December 2022.Credit: Akalanka Sameera

Fire Rescue Victoria endured four separate outages in the week to Saturday, for up to seven hours at a time, to both its Station and Firecom systems. Both systems cut out last Saturday, Monday and Tuesday.

They again shut down for one hour and 45 minutes on Saturday morning.

The Station Turn Out system alerts firefighters to dispatch to an emergency and automatically opens bay doors for fire trucks. Firecom provides real-time information about the location of vehicles, resources like hydrants, and the emergency itself.

The shutdowns prompted Fire Rescue Victoria to write to staff on Tuesday confirming the organisation was investigating the cause of the outages.

In a letter to Fire Rescue Victoria, seen by The Age, United Firefighters Union state secretary Peter Marshall said the two IT systems were critical and that outages hampered the ability of firefighters to respond to emergencies.

“The failure of these critical systems put firefighter and community safety at risk,” Marshall said.

“Without the Station Turn Out system functioning, firefighters rely upon a phone call to receive notification of an emergency incident to which they must turn out.

“The United Firefighters Union and members holds serious concerns regarding the recurring outages, their impact on firefighters’ and community safety, and the fact that FRV is failing to notify on-duty firefighters of these system failures.”

The shutdowns over the past week are just the latest IT problems to dog Fire Rescue Victoria. Over 24 hours on May 1 and May 2, three different systems failed.

The Fastcard system – which tracks crews attending jobs and is used to determine when they should receive follow-up testing for chemical exposure – went down. The Station Turn Out system experienced an outage, and Firecom began reporting 20-minute lags, meaning staff did not have real-time access to information.

Union delegate Doug Lukic said some firefighters were forced to rely on their phones and Melway maps to find their way. Stations were told to fall back on their pagers.

He said Fire Rescue Victoria was still working to get some systems back more than two years after an outage created by a December 2022 cyberattack. The Age has previously reported Fire Rescue Victoria did not get its dispatch system running again for eight months, until August 2023.

“We still don’t have all our systems back, [and] the systems that are back, we’re continually experiencing issues with them,” Lukic said. “Issues that are impacting the job that firefighters do every day, and firefighters come to work every day to put their lives on the line, ultimately, to serve and protect their community.

“Lack of information and having to go back to those manual systems, it’s just another layer that you know is just more pressure on the members.”

A Fire Rescue Victoria spokesperson said the agency had experienced “intermittent technical issues” to the Station Turn Out and Firecom systems.

“As a precaution, and to minimise disruption, FRV has direct lines of communication to fire stations through phone and pager systems, which ensure all emergency responses proceed without delay. At no time is public safety compromised,” the spokesperson said.

Responding to delays at the start of May, the spokesperson said public safety was not compromised and that Fire Rescue Victoria had worked swiftly to fix the situation.

“All systems were restored quickly, and enhanced monitoring has been implemented to ensure faster detection and response to any future anomalies.”

Fire Rescue Victoria, the Fire Services Implementation Monitor and the government have all previously said the months-long outage from December 2022 did not harm community safety.

Firefighters have not responded to structure fires within the target timeframe – which is 90 per cent of structure fires within 7.7 minutes – since quarter one in 2020-21. Fire Rescue Victoria reached 86.4 per cent on target in the most recent reporting period, quarter two of 2024-25.

“FRV attributes its challenges in meeting response targets to three main factors, including location accessibility, limited resource coverage, and turnout times. FRV advises that as part of its service planning efforts, it is working towards a sustainable approach to service delivery, including the need for additional stations and response units to improve geographic and resource coverage,” the implementation monitor said in the quarterly report.

“FRV further advises that it plans to conduct an analysis of station layout and turnout protocols to identify further improvements.”

In the 2023-24 financial year, after the cyberattack, Fire Rescue Victoria’s spending on consultants rose to $31.9 million, compared to $4.2 million the year before.

This included significant payments to technology consultancies such as Capgemini, Data#3, Cybercx, Scyne and Gartner, which were paid a combined total of $15.3 million.

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