 Hello, welcome to this session that we have today to look ahead towards the oncoming fire season and to have a look at some learnings that we had to take away from the West Meadows Grouse Fire. With me today to discuss these is operations officer James Dard from the CFA District 14. Welcome, James. Thanks, Quinny. Always good to come and have a chat with you. Good, James. We'll take the opportunity today to go through the learnings of the West Meadows Fire, but we should also discuss the Fire Commission's strategic control priorities. Absolutely. Key points. All right. The first one is the privacy of life, the safety of our responding crews and the community at large. All right. That's always going to be number one. Absolutely. The second part is the warnings and advice to community needing to be relevant, timely and tailored to suit the situation at hand. To get them out as quick as possible. Absolutely. All right. The priorities of the protection of infrastructure are vital to the community, residential properties, also community assets and the environment. Those strategic control priorities are on the Fire Service Commissioners website. Absolutely. All right. James, we'll take the opportunity now to discuss some of the learnings from the West Meadows Fire. One of the first things to come out of that was to consider establishing an incident control point, location control. How does the CFA do that? It's a key point for a CFA and it's difficult when you turn up and it's dusty and smoky and hot to find that best spot, but to have conversation with other agencies when you're there, have it a point that's of advantage and recognisable. So first responding crews, identify it, communicate it and other agencies attend it. Absolutely. Well identified so that you can get the other agencies. Really important for our crews to know where that is. As far as the incident management team goes, really important now to get someone from the other agency in as part of your incident management team structure. Yes. I think we've had liaison officers in the past, but to put that person who comes from the other agency as a deputy incident controller, gets a collaborative effort for management. So to stress again for our first responding crews, establish that our commanders or ops officers will come on scene, we'll get the intel, the information about it, we'll be able to plan from there. With regard to that, communications plans. Yes, early, get the communications in place early. We've got some pre-established commons plans. We should know about them before we get to the job. MFB uses a fire ground channel, the CFA users are? Yes, we go from dispatch channel into the fire ground channel and we have multiples of those. Alright, so for incidents on that interface, it's important to find out what channel we're using. Yes. In what sector, that's communicated to the incident control team through to the sector. Everybody should know about it. One of the learnings from the West Meadow fire was establishing or instigating safety officers. Yes. Now, we know MFB, we're quite good at establishing the safety officer at the static structure fires or incidents. How does the CFA manage that on a dynamic running grass fire? Look again, there's complexities that need to be considered and safety is an area that can be farmed off, I guess, to a safety officer. Need to be in contact with the crews, maybe even have established safety officers in sectors. Oh, so the safety officers in the sectors and also... Information back to the incident controller. Safety officer at the incident control point. That would be the person who would then inform the incident controller. So not only just looking for the physical hazards, but also the welfare of the crews. Hot summer, smoky, heavy gear that they're wearing. So to be another set of all other sets of eyes for the incident controller on the fire ground. Utilization of existing plans. Yes. The MFB has grass, has parkland, technical response plans. They're on the intranet, under the bushfire tab. They should also be on all appliances at stations at the interface. CFA have similar plans? Yes. We've got bushfire response plans for municipalities contained within them would be specific plans for the likes of a Plenty Courage or Woodlands Park. So this time of year it's vital to pull those plans out. Have them out, review, talk about them. Dust them off. Absolutely. Head down to the other station, the MFB station and chat or invite people back to your station. What a great opportunity for both agencies to glean that information that they hold, share it and have it there at the ready to be used at such incidents. Right, another learning from the fire was our public information. We've early discussed, it's one of the fire commissioners control priorities. Clearly we want to keep the community informed. Yep. For MFB first responding officers and command staff, we're able to get that information out through a one source, one message or emergency alert and that is accessed via VKNATE for the via the ECC manager. Finally with us, Incident Controller through VKFIRE to the RDO, the key is to have a really good picture for the website. For the community today and that relevant information in a timely fashion. That information goes on both websites and is shared which is vitally important for the people living on that interface. Yes. Look it up. Finally, evacuations. It's important to remember that the incident controller is responsible for the decision to evacuate. If it's time critical, this decision should be made immediately. Sure you've got the resources there or get more if you need them. And where possible, this decision should be made in consultation with the EMT. For Lisa responsible for managing the evacuation, there's a five-step process there to go to happen, but you're right. Information from the EMT before you make that decision to evacuate or shower in place is vital. That information that we've shared today, the West Meadows operational review is on the fire service commission and website. And also, all of the information that we've discussed today is under the fire agency bushfire. Available online, carries really good information throughout. Fantastic. James, all I can say is great to see you again. Thanks for your time today. No worries, Brad. Long season ahead, so let's everyone stay safe. And that's got to be our message. Stay safe. Have a merry Christmas everyone and we'll see you out there in the dust and smoke. Thanks, Brad.