The rural communities of Goorambat and Stewarton will be safer places to live after the local CFA brigade secured funding for new equipment.
Thanks to grants from the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal and the Australian Rail Track Corporation it has been able to purchase three new electric chainsaws and a thermal imaging camera.
Brigade firefighter Jay Martin said both would benefit volunteers and the community in a number of ways.
“With petrol chainsaws you have the issue of having to service them annually, which is a cost,” Mr Martin said.
“As a smaller rural CFA we have less resources, so reducing costs is important.
“Then there’s the issue of the fuel in them, which is obviously flammable. And because they are stowed on the CFA truck we need to carry extra fuel for them.
“Then there’s a risk of having two-stoke fuel on a truck near fires. We’ve already moved away from petrol pumps to diesel, as it is less flammable.
“So from a safety perspective, the electric chainsaws are much better.
“All we need to worry about is that the blade is sharp and the battery is charged.”
Mr Martin said there was an extra time-saving advantage to the electric chainsaws.
“The nature of what we use a chainsaw for means speed is important,” he said.
“If, for example, there is a tree across the road and we need to get the truck out of a dangerous area it’s much quicker to grab the chainsaw, hit a couple of buttons and get it cleared away.”
Mr Martin said the main advantage of the thermal imaging camera was that it saved time, and as a result also saved resources and allowed volunteers to spend less time away from their families, businesses and jobs.
“During the summer one of our main jobs is what we call blacking out,” he said.
“Once a fire is extinguished we undertake work to address any hot spots that might re-ignite.
“If we’re working on acres and acres of land we might traditionally look for areas that are still smoking and blanket them with water to cool them down.
“And as the truck only holds 2000 litres we need to be going back and forth to a dam, for example, to refill.
“With a thermal imaging camera we can see the hot spots and instead of targeting hundreds of metres we can target maybe one square metre, therefore saving water, and the time going back and forth to refill.”
So while it reduces water use, it also saves time and gets volunteers back home sooner.
Mr Martin said grants were an effective way for a rural CFA brigade to secure the equipment required to keep its community safe.
“Other brigades will undertake fundraising activities such as sausage sizzles,” he said.
“We don’t have as many opportunities to do that kind of thing, so we’re always looking for grants to improve the way we serve our communities.”