![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.timesnewsgroup.com.au\/prod\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/02\/heavytanker_edit03_51845.jpg\")
<\/p>\nVictoria’s rural firefighting agency has undergone a wholesale modernisation since Ash Wednesday that continues today, as it strives to never again experience a tragedy of the same scale.<\/p>\n
Country Fire Authority (CFA) deputy chief officer Garry Cook pinpoints the 1983 blaze as a “watershed” event in the service’s history, with its impacts still motivating leaders to continually improve its systems and resources.<\/p>\n
Mr Cook joined the brigade a volunteer firery in 1980 at King Valley in Victoria’s north-east, aged 16, and progressed to the career ranks in the mid-1980s.<\/p>\n
His 40 years of experience from the front line all the way to top strategy meetings have seen him witness the transformation of the CFA into today’s service.<\/p>\n
“I think of Ash Wednesday as a landmark or watershed moment, because it was a tragedy on a scale that we hadn’t seen in firefighting,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“The scale, the damage, the impact, and the need to look at so many things that we were doing and set about a journey of moderninsing \u2013 that was the beginning of the next generation of the CFA.”<\/p>\n
Among the first changes was decommissioning of tankers in action on Ash Wednesday that dated back to the 1960s to a diesel-powered fleet.<\/p>\n
Updated trucks include materials that help protect firefighters inside and their resources. Some responders were left stranded on Ash Wednesday after their vehicle’s fuel vaporised under the intense heat.<\/p>\n
Clothing has also advanced considerably, with firefighters today fitted out head-to-toe with personalised gear to suit different types of callouts.<\/p>\n
On Ash Wednesday, volunteers would, at best, be covered by a communal suit or overalls stashed behind the seats of their tankers.<\/p>\n
“A lot of people on the fireground in 1983 were not in any specific personal protective clothing. They might have been in jeans and a long-sleeve shirt,” Mr Cook said.<\/p>\n
Today, on-ground fire crews can have support from automatically dispatched aircraft for a multi-pronged attack on fires.<\/p>\n
Communications technology has also vastly improved, both for operational responses and broadcasting potentially life-saving information to the public.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.timesnewsgroup.com.au\/prod\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/02\/StructuralHelmets2_51851.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The CFA’s outreach also includes community education and emphasising the importance of bushfire plans.<\/p>\n
Mr Cook said collaboration and co-operation with fire-prone communities such as those on the Surf Coast was paramount to preventing a repeat of the 1983 disaster.<\/p>\n
“Will we get another day like Ash Wednesday, like Black Saturday\u2026 inevitably the answer is yes,” he said<\/p>\n
“We can have the best of the best of the best, and will continue to strive to be better.<\/p>\n
“But we have to have a community that is ready and alert, and prepared to act as well. That’ll give us the best chance of reducing the loss of life and or the loss of property.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Victoria’s rural firefighting agency has undergone a wholesale modernisation since Ash Wednesday that continues today, as it strives to never again experience a tragedy of the same scale. Country Fire Authority (CFA) deputy chief officer Garry Cook pinpoints the 1983 blaze as a “watershed” event in the service’s history, with its impacts still motivating leaders […]<\/p>\n