 Westmere Group with a message for their moisture and the war of a gage. We have a report of a fire near the core of the moisture and the war of a road. Could the war and the maroon of a gage please turn out as soon as possible and any private units in that area could be also please turn out. That was Jonathan Coot, so comms officer for Westmere Group, putting out a call for a fire call for Westmere Group with a call for private units. Jonathan runs one of the seven sub bases within Westmere Group and every fire during summer will get that call for private units. My name is Bernie Fred, I'm the Operations Manager for District 16 and we're here today with Westmere Group which is almost the spiritual home of private units. To talk to the group officer and the DJ is about the importance of private units and how to see if they can support the group and other groups around the state in making sure that they're there for the long term. I'd like to welcome the new group of Westmere Group and Westmere Group covers the power of million acres of predominantly farmland and grassland from roughly the edge of Ballarat right through to the rambians. We have a very big private tanker network consisting of about 400 private tankers all up. So really, private tankers are the backbone of our group. A lot of them are actually private tankers which is very important to our group and they're still coming on board it, they become available, private landowners are going by them and a lot of others are just trucks off purchase to set up themselves. So rather than men having to get in their cars, come into camp, get a truck and go back there, you've got a whole fleet of trucks at the ready, in panic or at properties with people close by. Absolutely and every brigade has a number of private tankers. On a total 5N day we'll run a scare at 10 o'clock in the morning and the first thing that each captain has to do is let the comms on and the group know how many private tankers and what are their lights or heavies are available to that day. So as we know it's a total 5N day to come to the law and Anthony Hurd will say okay we've got 10 lights and 25 heavies available today and that's on top of the sea. They're all crude, ready to go. Bearing in mind that our group is predominantly cropping down at the agriculture, there used to be a lot of rising amounts of money cropping so we're right now summer months with a lot of machinery in paddocks, a lot of heavies double lows, hell of a flyer and for every landowner there's got at least one private unit. Okay I'm here with David Allen from Warndew who is a deputy group officer with the West Mead Group. We've already heard from right about the importance of private units to first attack. Now West Mead Group do an awful lot of roadside burning and protection of their community. So Dave what is your private unit's duty? They're an integral part of private burning, burning the roads rather than burning the West Mead Group burn about 480 kilometres of roads every year and at my brigade Warndew we burn about 60 to 70 kilometres and the reason we burn the roads is fuel reduction primarily but also ecological benefits and another big added benefit is the training value for young or new firefighters. So the use of private tankers is really important to make all that happen in an easy and seamless sort of operation. Here with Anthony Heard, Anthony's the captain of the Law Review and a pretty clean member of the West Mead Group as well. Now Anthony is a haters in CFA, I've got a bit of a view that private units are rusty farm trucks generally run by old man in shorts and telly-telling hats. You've got a very different view of that. Probably couldn't be any further from the truth there Bernie. Apple Law really conduct an annual unit inspection where units of pumps are tested, people give their trucks a run so general road work in this sort of things are looked at. All the trucks have a UHF radio in them so there is communication with the group. So when fire calls go out over the group command channel people have got listening sets in the trucks as well so they're getting updates. So people know what's going on in the fire ground so they can respond to calling. We've heard from the West Mead Group people about how important they see the private units are. There's a couple of brochures here operating guidelines and the checklists for private units. If you need more information on private units go into your district headquarters and you can get those brochures. In closing, critical that we are able to manage these private units. It does create a certain risk for the controllers at fires but the benefits far outweigh those risks providing you take the time to engage them. Make sure they're part of your comms plan, part of your incident structure and remember everyone needs to go home safe. Thanks very much.