To celebrate National Volunteer Week (13-19 May), CFA is saying “thanks a million” to its volunteers, families and employers for everything they do. This week we will feature a series of profile stories to highlight the great work and diversity of our volunteer members.
David Dean is one of thousands of CFA volunteers who give hours of his time to help others.
However, Mr Dean acknowledges his commitment to CFA would not be possible without the support of management and his colleagues at Portland Aluminium.
“I’ve been working at Portland Aluminium for 11 years and they are always willing to let me go when I’ve been paged to a job,” he said.
“And it’s not just the management team, other employees step up and fill the void when the volunteers go.”
Of the 44 members with Cashmore brigade, more than 15 work at Portland Aluminium in various roles from operators and engineers to senior management. There are many more from other brigades that work there too.
Portland Aluminium Production Manager Peter Chellis said volunteering was a vital part of the community.
“At Portland Aluminium we encourage our employees to make their corner of the world a better place,” he said.
“We foster a unique corporate culture of service, where each and every employee is encouraged, supported and recognised for the active role they play in making our community a safer, stronger and more innovative place to live and work.”
Mr Dean has been a member at Cashmore for 23 years and in June last year became captain of the brigade.
In that time he has been away to fight fires in New South Wales and Kangaroo Island and in Victoria at the Kinglake fires in 2009, and at Mt Beauty.
This fire season, the Cashmore brigade had volunteers deployed to the Kentbruck fire. When fire encroached on brigade members’ doorsteps in the town, their employer was only too happy for them to assist.
“At least six members of the brigade live in that area and had fire just on their back doorstep. Like any other fire, whether we were fighting it on our days off and it ran into a rostered day or we had to leave work, they let us go and shuffle work around to allow us to do our job as brigade members,” Mr Dean said.
“That was a pretty scary time and Portland Aluminium supported local CFA members extremely well, I am sure they will continue to do so into the future.”
If you have a volunteer story you would like to share, get in touch with us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
- Story by Charlotte Azzopardi
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Author: CFA Media