FRV pulls community safety work as CFA gets on with the job

Fire Rescue Victoria school and community safety sessions have been canned over COVID-19, as CFA volunteers continue to deliver their programs.

FRV has failed to report its response times and pulled out of community safety training due to COVID fears, Victoria’s Fire Services Implementation Monitor has found.

THE fully-professional Fire Rescue Victoria service has withdrawn from delivering school and other community safety sessions since being formed last July, even at the 12 country stations it stripped from the CFA.

Victoria’s Fire Services Implementation Monitor Niall Blair, whose job is to assess the Andrews Government’s carve up of the fire services, found FRV not only failed to run community engagement programs, but did not supply him with records of its brigades’ callouts and response times from October 1 to December 31.

Meanwhile, the CFA continued to deliver its Fire Safe Kids, Community Fireguard, Fire Ready Victoria and 10 other programs, with volunteers initiating even more ad-hoc community safety work despite COVID-19 restrictions.

A CFA spokeswoman said it “worked hard to ensure fire prevention and preparedness did not stop due to COVID-19”, using “online channels, and when appropriate, face-to-face sessions which were adjusted to meet COVIDSafe procedures.

“Many of the programs are solely and proudly run by volunteers or a combination of volunteers and staff,” she said.

“CFA offered 504 community engagement opportunities to the community. However this relates only to the delivery of standardised state-level programs, other ad-hoc or tailored engagement undertaken by local brigades is not captured.”

An FRV spokeswoman said the service “temporarily paused community engagement activities and non-essential interactions with the public as a standard part of our pandemic response plan”.

But while pandemic restrictions on public gatherings were more severe in metropolitan Melbourne last year, FRV career firefighters failed to take advantage of the easing of restrictions in regional Victoria to deliver any community safety programs. And it appears they have done little to lift community safety engagement since then.

The Weekly Times asked FRV if its United Firefighters Union members had undertaken any community safety activities since January 1, but a spokeswoman said “physical interactions with the community have been temporarily paused”, although its multicultural liaison officers had run some online sessions on home fire safety and smoke alarms.

As for schools FRV stated “our Community Education team has developed an updated Fire Education curriculum which will be rolled out in schools as soon as possible.”

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