Lauren Hawkins said during severe weather warnings, each unit reported how capable they were to respond to incidents to the regional duty officer.

"We also have an internal way of seeing who is available during the day and who has family and work commitments," she said.

"We still need additional membership to fill holes during day - maybe five to ten more members - because it does end up being same people that turn out each time."

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Ms Hawkins said the Horsham unit received an extra seven volunteers from its previous recruitment drive in May 2019. She said the SES focused on managing fatigue amongst its volunteers.

"The maximum time you're meant to spend on an operation is 10 hours a day, and you have to take into consideration whether a person worked that day already," she said.

"If they have done a full day shift of hard work, everyone has to assess whether they are fit for duty or not."

Volunteer Karl Mitton works at AXIS employment. He said the difficulty in judging how long an SES job would take prevented him from leaving to help during work hours.

He said there were not a lot of volunteers at the Horsham unit under 30 years old.

"It is a big commitment, and you have to train for six months before you become operational, and you can't be operational if you're under 18," he said.

District 17 Country Fire Authority Operation manager Craig Brittain said the CFA didn't run a rostering system. He praised volunteers for always making themselves available.

"Within a brigade system, we have volunteers that take holidays sometimes and reduce their brigade's numbers, but they normally let the captains or brigade management team know who is and isn't around," he said.

"The CFA also runs a number of response tables designed around particular brigade areas. So hypothetically if we have a fire in Horsham, we know automatically what brigades have responded to support Horsham. Likewise if brigade outside of Horsham, we know other brigades can respond accordingly.

"Also on a bad day if we have a high fire risk day or a Total Fire Ban day, we have a teleconference with group officers - who then talk to their captains who then talk to their brigades - and we have pre-formed strike teams.

"So we know we've got a certain number of appliances available and brigades know they have to have a certain number of people on them and respond accordingly when they are required."

Mr Brittain said there were three levels of incidents, from bin fires to incidents at the level of the East Gippsland bushfires.

"If we've got a small fire, when we get a report, generally we will get a location, but because no one is actually on scene yet, we have to respond as if it's escalating," he said.

"We have a normal three-brigade response, so if volunteers are off on holidays and there are not as many in one brigade as normal, they get support from surrounding brigades. We always have more than one brigade coming in to support each other."

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