South Morang celebrates 60 years of service

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Member News image South Morang Captain Brent Sandlant, photo by Uniform Photography

South Morang Fire Brigade celebrated its 60th anniversary on Saturday 13 July at an annual dinner held at Greensborough RSL.

At the dinner seven members received long service awards including Life Member Adrian Backx who received a 40-year award.

“The night was an extremely successful event. It provided the perfect mix of past and current members and allowed the brigade to reconnect with its history,” Captain Brent Sandlant said.

The brigade has 50 members and 47 of those are operational. The brigade is co-located with Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV), and turns out to about 130 incidents each year.

“Recruitment has been fantastic recently,” Brent said. “We are going through a renewal process. Almost 30 community members have joined in the past 24 months and having so many new members has brought a number of new skill sets into the brigade. Also the excitement of the newer members has helped reignite the passion of the older members.

“The new members just want to serve the community. They are fresh, eager and have no baggage.”

South Morang has a predominantly young demographic, with many people in their 30s and 40s who now have children leaving high school or university.

“We are targeting young people with passion and we want to be in the position to challenge our new members to be the best they can be. Happily, whenever we present them with a challenge, the young people exceed all expectations,” Brent said.

The area has seen dramatic population growth in the past few years, growing by 19 per cent between 2011 and 2021. South Morang brigade’s management team flagged this as an issue and in 2015 the brigade gained CFA career firefighters. To cope with the additional staff, the station was redeveloped to include sleeping facilities.

“The brigade has prided itself in adapting to the changing needs of the community of South Morang. This is why the brigade made the decision in 2009 to be part of the Emergency Medical Response pilot program and we are still providing the service today.

“Our EMR-trained members maintain their skills and are ready to respond throughout our area in order to support Fire Rescue Victoria in any means necessary.”

South Morang members are also specially trained to make LPG gas cylinders safe at incidents and cover a large response area well beyond the urban sprawl in order to carry out LPG flare-offs.

Brent has been the captain of South Morang since last year, after a 12-month handover from the previous captain.

“This was a really good mentoring process as the previous captain, Lindsay McHugh, had decades of experience which enabled me to hit the ground running,” Brent said.

Brent is a fourth-generation firefighter and he has the passion to succeed. This was essential during the recent Fire Services Reform when once again South Morang Fire Brigade adapted to the changing needs of the community.

“Following Fire Services Reform and then COVID-19, we reassessed the brigade’s role within the community and how we could support FRV effectively. We thought about what we wanted the brigade to be and one word kept being mentioned – we wanted passion.”

South Morang brigade members have attended many significant fires, both locally and interstate, including responses to Queensland and Beaufort and as part of CFA’s response to the Rochester and Echuca flood emergency.

Brent is keen for his members to pass on their passion to others.

“At South Morang we pride ourselves on being able to pass on knowledge and provide training opportunities to all our members with the expectation that in turn they help add their experience to the knowledge pool and pass it onto the next generation.”

This passing on of knowledge underpinned a number of brigade service awards on the night, including Firefighter of the Year Mitchell Ferris (who also won the Peer Award) and Captain’s Award winners Hayden Marshall, Stratos Tavambis and Vlasis Tavambis, which is the first time the brigade has issued the award to three people in the same year.