March has seen the lifting of restrictions across our district, with the mild weather and fuel conditions resulting in a reduced risk across the four municipalities.
The timing of this has aligned with our neighbouring districts also, ensuring that landowners now have the opportunity to undertake clean up works on their properties, with less confusion for both the public and our brigades about which burns are legal and those that are not. This said, there is still potential for fires to escape therefore we need to ensure that we remain vigilant and although the conditions have significantly moderated, there is no substantial rain forecast at this stage.
As we are now at the end of our summer fire season, our focus shifts to conducting After Action Reviews (AAR) in order to identify areas that we can improve upon, not only for next summer but the next time we are alerted by our pagers. There is room to improve in everything we do and our focus should always be to keep bettering ourselves in order to better serve our communities.
As always, your brigades and groups will be conducting local AAR with outcomes and recommendations being submitted to District 2 where appropriate. District 2 will be conducting an AAR on Sunday 12th April 2015 which will enable Group Officers and representatives to discuss and workshop some of the items that arose from their local level and incorporate into the broader District actions for consideration over coming months. I encourage all of you to take the time to reflect and provide meaningful feedback via your brigades and groups so we can all better appreciate some of the broader issues that we encountered.
The next phase that we are moving into is the Section 29 Inspection and election cycle. Again your catchment teams will be looking to schedule inspections to better understand the local issues, assist with developing your brigade recruit plans and subsequently reviewing and updating training plans. It is best to have a good understanding of the main issues or priorities that need to be discussed prior to the inspection as to make best use of the time available.
Again, we encourage you to get your scheduled dates in for upcoming elections so we can provide assistance with this process before and during. Taking the time to consider and develop a succession plan for your brigade will not only ensure a sustainable future with the right people leading the way forward, but can also greatly assist throughout the election process, negating the need for last minute call ups!
As we move to the cooler months, I want to thank you and your families again for another tremendous effort during our summer fire season. Although we may have been a little quieter than last, we still experienced significant activity up until early to mid January. So thank you and well done.
Steve Smith - District 2 Operations Manager
Author: District 2 News