THE logistical challenges of managing a large-scale emergency are well-known to Horsham’s Dale Russell.
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Mr Russell retired last year after 32 years with the Country Fire Authority. He was the authority’s District 17 operations manager at the time of the Northern Grampians Complex fire.
More than 440 authority crew were involved in the fire-fight at its peak.
SPECIAL FEATURE: Northern Grampians Complex fire, five years on
Mr Russell said the Horsham Incident Control Centre was the management hub for directing everyone from ground crews to media during a major fire.
“We’ve got planning people looking at what’s happening now and what might happen in the future, and your logistics people who are saying, ‘We’ve got this many people involved’ and working out how to feed them and where, so there’s a number of things happening at ICC level,” he said.
“Then you’ve got the operational section, which directs the troops on the ground. They have to know who is where and what they are doing, and task them through a chain of command.
“It takes a bit of getting to work. On day one it probably doesn't work as well as it does on day two.
“The other part of the control centre is the public information unit.”
Mr Russell said the Northern Grampians Complex fire also brought challenges related to night firefighting.
“We can't use aircraft at night, though there's a trial going on at the moment around that,” he said.
“(At the moment), aircraft have to be landed by dark. You can also only use a pilot for a certain number of hours as well, and it depends how much flying they've done before that as to whether they 'time out'.
“It will be good to see where the trial takes us.
“Aircraft are trying to operate in the worst possible conditions. While they are good, they are not the panacea of firefighting – you need the ground crews to get in to do what they do.”
Mr Russell said the Northern Grampians Complex fire produced intense scenes.
“You get what's called a pyrocumulus cloud. You've got a great column of smoke going up, and because of the radicals and things in the burning material, you can see actually lightning in the column,” he said.
“A phenomenon, yes. Do we like to see them? No.
“But when you have high fuel loads, like we had at the time, you would expect that to occur.”