Fires Victoria: One in five operational CFA volunteers have left since 2012

Victoria’s surge capacity to fight major fires is being rapidly eroded, with the CFA losing at least one in five operational volunteers since 2012. But the CFA keeps shuffling the numbers.

The CFA has lost one in five operational volunteers since 2012. Picture: Jason Edwards

AT LEAST one in five of Victoria’s active volunteer firefighters have left the CFA in the past eight years, eroding the surge capacity needed to fight major fires.

Since 2012 the number of active operational CFA volunteers has fallen from 38,285 to 29,834 today, a 22 per cent drop, with most of those leaving in the past 12 months.

Yet the CFA continues to report a headline figure of 54,444 volunteers, by reclassifying volunteers into “support” roles.

CFA statistics published on the authority’s website this month show the constant reclassification of operational volunteers has pushed the number in support roles from 16,843 in 2012 to 23,400 by the end of 2020.

While many of these support volunteers are actively helping their brigades with fund raising and other roles, the CFA has no direct line of sight on how many are no longer engaged with their brigades.

A CFA spokesman said the change in volunteer numbers “reflects the internal reclassification of some members who have not yet completed critical safety training required by the CFA Chief Officer, or who no longer wish to respond to emergencies for a range of reasons.

“This change in member classification has not affected CFA’s capacity to respond to incidents and major emergencies” and “we have never used our full contingent of operational volunteers in any given year”.

However, Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria chief executive Adam Barnett said that argument didn’t stack up, given the Department of Justice had set much higher targets.

The DoJ’s 2019-20 annual report set a performance target of 43,000–44,000 operational emergency service volunteers, for the CFA and the State Emergency Service (which has 5147 volunteers).

The DoJ even highlights the actual operational volunteer numbers are 19.7 per cent below its performance target.

Mr Barnett said it appeared the CFA and Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville were not worried about the loss of operational capability, but “we should be”.

“This is the lowest number of volunteers we’ve had in Victoria’s history,” Mr Barnett said. “And they should be doing more about it.”

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