EVERY brigade will soon receive the Who can train and assess? poster.

The poster is to encourage members to deliver training and skills assessment within their own brigade or group of brigades.

Training such as crew and team practice, familiarisation sessions, on-the-job coaching, and skills maintenance drills can be done locally, ensuring that local knowledge is passed on.

Brigade and group training can be carried out by any operational firefighter, providing the brigade member has the expertise to deliver the content. This means volunteers can train other volunteers.

Good Friday appeal record

Congratulations to our CFA members who banded together to raise a record-breaking $1.25 million through doorknocking, fun runs, market stalls, parades, raffles and taking part in the joint 24-hour relay alongside MFB.

For more than 60 years, CFA has now collected and raised over $22 million for the Appeal - a testament to the generosity and goodwill of our members.

Thank you to all members involved.

Planned burns

Thank you to CFA brigades who recently conducted planned burns, both on their own and in conjunction with DSE, Parks Victoria and Melbourne Water.

Planned or fuel reduction burns provide an opportunity for brigades to train and gain experience in fire behaviour, ignition and suppression as well as actively exercise command and control on the fireground with our DSE partners.

Thanks also to DSE biodiversity staff for their ongoing support and partnership in planning roadside burns. They’re helping us to establish a fire regime for roadsides that delivers fire prevention outcomes as well as environmental benefits for our native flora and fauna.

Radio program gathers pace

The roll-out of the Next Generation digital radios continues across CFA.

Nearly every CFA truck has now been equipped with a vehicle-mounted mobile radio as part of the radio replacement program, with only 800 more to be rolled out across the state.

To complement this, brigades will receive more than 5000 new P25 Tait handheld radios by the end of June (a first for some) and 1600 ‘transportable radio units’ by the end of the year.

The development of versatile bag radios, which will replace the older generation of less mobile radios currently in service, is nearly complete.

Volunteer Week (14-20 May)

National Volunteer Week is just around the corner.

Although it’s important to recognise our volunteers all year round, this week gives us the opportunity to formally acknowledge and celebrate the extraordinary commitment of our volunteers.

To help us prepare for Volunteer Week, we’d like to see messages, poems, songs or even short videos from the community using these words: Thank you CFA volunteers.

They will be used in promotions during Volunteer Week. Send your entry to: cfaprom@cfa.vic.gov.au by 4 May.

Member id project

Every CFA member is entitled to receive a member ID card.

All members who haven’t yet signed up for an ID card should complete their application form on Brigades Online, accessible through cfa.vic.gov.au. You’ll then receive photo identification that formally recognises you as a CFA member, making it easier to progress through police roadblocks.

The Member ID Project addresses recommendations made in the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission.