By Callum Ludwig
Two Upper Yarra brigades are set to benefit from the latest round of Volunteer Emergency Services Equipment Program (VESEP) grants from the Victorian Government.
Hillcrest and Yellingbo CFA each had their requests approved and will receive funding to upgrade their vehicles and appliances.
Yellingbo CFA Captain Jeremy Hardy said it’s very important to keep the brigade equipped with good quality equipment.
“The brigade had a Mark 1 rehab vehicle that was pretty much the first one in the state and has served us well for 13 years, and now this new one will be able to continue to serve us well for years to come,” he said.
“The new one will have a twin cab, so it will have the seating capacity for six people whereas the previous one could only seat three members, and will also be four-wheel drive which will enable us to go off of main roads if need be, for grass and scrub fires and it just has a better capacity for carrying the equipment that we have on our rehab.”
Yellingbo CFA will receive $163,333 to bolster the funds to purchase and kit out the new rehab vehicle.
Mr Hardy said it’s really important that the brigades get support to help fund equipment for the upcoming fire seasons.
“Brigades do a lot of fundraising to be able to buy some equipment where they can, but having a VESEP grant helps brigades purchase more expensive equipment to boost their capability to help the community,” he said.
“It’s very important that we do have the appropriate equipment that we can be deployed to help other areas of the state wherever we can as well, that’s a big part of CFA, being able utilize equipment from other areas of the state into more important areas that are having incidents at the time.”
Hillcrest CFA received a $62,000 grant.
Hillcrest CFA Captain Colin Dickson said they applied for a breathing apparatus (BA) support vehicle.
“We’re going to be getting a single cab Ford Ranger purpose-built and designed to carry 24 breathing apparatus cylinders which will also be able to do mask cleaning for when people are wearing their BA sets on site,” he said.
“It’s got an under-tray water tank with a little pump that will pump water out so we can do mask cleaning and it can carry some chairs and minor rehab things to help firefighters if they need to take a break.”
Hillcrest CFA’s previous support vehicle could only carry 18 cylinders and had no other purpose-built features. It joins the containment fill station(CFS) installed at the brigade in March 2022 to refill the cylinders, saving the trip for Bayswater CFA’s mobile BA unit.
Mr Dickson said important for local brigades to be able to support others at jobs that they go to where breathing apparatus is required.
“One of the really good things about having BA at Bayswater and at Hillcrest is it means that when they’ve done that job, they’re fully restored and they’re ready to go straight away if another job comes up and leave us or Bayswater to the refilling,” he said.
“We’re hopeful that CFA will continue down the path of doing a swap-and-go system for breathing cylinders like you do with the barbecue gas bottles, where you can just hand over an empty one and receive a full one back,”
“We currently do that to a limited extent with the current vehicle whereby if a brigade utilises a cylinder of the job we’ll go there, we’ll give them one of our full cylinders and take home their empty one to fill it up.”
