Kylie (second from left) was one of five staff members who took part in the burn. Image: Kylie Findley
A group of CFA staff members from the south-east have deepened their knowledge of fire behaviour by taking part in a planned burn last week.
The five District 11 staff members, who have all successfully completed CFA’s General Firefighter course to enable them to participate, were given the opportunity to take part in the training which took place on a private property in Buchan.
Vegetation Management Officer Chris Lewis, who coordinated the burn, said it was the perfect opportunity to look at different vegetation management techniques.
“We were approached by the landowner a year or so ago. He was impacted significantly during the 2019-20 fires, and the regrowth that’s occurred on his property, which is primarily black wattle, has been significant," Chris said.
“He asked if we could help, so I worked with our biodiversity adviser to come up with a plan to trial a couple of different approaches. The landowner gave us the use of a paddock that was full of wattle and we developed a plan to mulch two sections and leave one as a control.
"The plan was to burn one of the mulched areas, leave one of the areas as is and leave the third area unburned and unmulched and then compare them.”
Chris said he was keen to get the District 11 Headquarters staff involved.
“The burn was only very small, way less than a hectare, so it gave the staff the opportunity to get out of the office and do some professional development in terms of their own knowledge of fire, fire behaviour, use of drip torches and use of pumps.”
There were a range of benefits for the staff taking part.
“When staff are asked questions by the public about planned burns, they can speak from experience," Chris said. "Also, sometimes volunteers will speak to our staff about their experiences, and it can be hard to empathise because they haven’t had that frontline involvement.”
Future burns will provide further opportunity for staff to get involved.
“In the future I’ll get the staff to come along to more burns and mix with the volunteers. That way, it builds rapport between staff, volunteers and landowners.”
Kylie Findley works in the Volunteer Sustainability Team (VST) in District 11. She was one of the five staff members to take part in the burn.
“There were five staff members who took part in the burn. Aimee and Caitlin, who are both District Support Officers, Vanessa the District Business Manager, Steph who’s the Brigade Finance Officer and myself from VST. The five of us all also happen to be women, and it was such a great supportive little group,” Kylie said.
“We were able to be guided through the whole process and practise skills we don’t usually get to use, and we had an instructor and a safety officer with us to make sure we were following the correct procedures. The instructor talked through everything with us and it was just great. We got to see how the wind affected the fire too and how conditions changed throughout the burn.”
Kylie said the best part of the day was working together as a team to boost their knowledge.
“It helped all of us to increase our understanding of what our volunteers do. We were only out there for two hours and we were exhausted. We can now empathise with the volunteers who are on the ground, fighting the fires across the state every day. They go out and spend six to eight hours on the fireground, and we were barely coping with two hours.”
A planned burn is the controlled use of fire under carefully-managed conditions to reduce fuel such as dead wood, leaf litter, bark and shrubs. Find out more on the CFA website.