On Saturday the 22nd September from 11am – 3pm the station will be open for the Get Ready Weekend. This initiative aims to prepare you, your family, and your community for the upcoming fire season. Arcadia has been busy, planning away, to offer you an informative and inclusive event. Come for a BBQ, and have a chat to our friendly firies about the risks specific to the Arcadia area. If you’ve got a portable pump then bring that along too if you need a hand with it. We will have sessions on how to best protect your home, the past history of fires in our area, and what to do with your animals. Bring the kids too!
Preparing your animals for incidents, kids activities, and registering your property for bush fire inspection will run from 11am – 3pm.
With the fire season nearly upon us and the unrelenting dry autumn and winter we’ve experienced, we must push this message of preparing for survival. Our last major fires in this area was in 2002, we must not become complacent. Further to this message of planning and preparing, whilst undertaking pile burns to reduce your own bushfire hazards, please ensure that adequate water is at all times accessible, and that the pile burn is constantly monitored. Over the past month there have been numerous preventable fires that started as escaped pile burns. Don’t be the risk to your neighbours and wider community.
In August Arcadia, alongside Galston and Dural RFB, Fire & Rescue Castle Hill, Police, and NSW Ambulance, we assisted an injured bushwalker from an arduous trail. We had a great outcome, and it was an excellent demonstration of interagency cooperation and cohesion. This work we do with other agencies is something we continuously work towards improving. Whilst we continue keeping up with Arcadia, just under 12 months ago the Arcadia brigade started a long-term plan to ensure that we were fully prepared when on the many and varied incidents we work with our friends and colleagues at Fire & Rescue Castle Hill. This has involved joint exercises at both the Castle Hill and Arcadia stations, and orchestrating a large-scale training exercise at Vision Valley in Arcadia. This training event involved 6 RFS brigades, from the Hornsby/ Ku-Ring-Gai and Hills districts, and Fire & Rescue A Platoon. This multifaceted training scenario was focused on dealing with a very large structure fire with people reported being missing inside the building, while also testing the fireground management, breathing apparatus, communications and first aid.
From the fantastic feedback from all involved, it was agreed that we need to continue to do this joint training, which we did. Both Arcadia and Castle Hill’s A Platoon developed the next steps of the training program, which was focussed on using Fire & Rescue’s computer-based scenario training system. From the initial success of this we opened this up to other RFS brigades, Galston, Dural, and the Hills district. While we train we continue to build on the already great relationship we have with Fire Rescue, this ensures that we have a cohesive teamwork and approach while we are working together
