WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

Based on the annual reports of the various fire authorities in the capital cities I list the response times they provided. Be aware you can't always compare these as there are differences in the way these are reported, the types of incidents they were responding to and how they define "response time". (Like comparing apples with oranges....)

LOCATION YEAR PERCENTILE TIME (mins)
ACT 2002/2003 50% 6.3
NSW 2005/2006 50% 7.0
VIC 2005/2006 90% 7.7
QLD 2005/2006 97% within 14 mins
SA 2005/2006 50% 6.79
WA 2005/2006 50% 8
TAS 2005/2006 50% 8.1
NT NO DATA

You might like to have a look at this web page from the 2007 Federal Government Productivity Commission report on Government Services.

http://www.pc.gov.au/gsp/reports/rogs/2 ... ment08.pdf

The response times are broken down to the following: Major cities, Inner Regional, Outer Regional, Remote and Very Remote.

They classify a major city as having a population of over a million people.

For a city to be concidered as major they use the Australian Bureau of Statistics standard. Therefore you are only looking at Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Hobart, Canberra and Darwin do not qualify.

FESA response time standard is 8 minutes from the time of call to the arrival of the first truck.

Therefore FESA are only meeting their response time standard 50% of the time.

As for comparision for each state.

50th Percentile 90th Percentile
Sydney 6.6 10.4
Melbourne 6.2 8.6
Brisbane 6.4 9.9
Perth 8.0 12.0
Adelaide 7.0 10.0


Therefore the slowest metropolitan fire service in Australia and only meet FESA's own standards 50% of the time to structure fires.

I hope this helps.

Max wrote:You might like to have a look at this web page from the 2007 Federal Government Productivity Commission report on Government Services.

http://www.pc.gov.au/gsp/reports/rogs/2 ... ment08.pdf

The response times are broken down to the following: Major cities, Inner Regional, Outer Regional, Remote and Very Remote.

They classify a major city as having a population of over a million people.

For a city to be concidered as major they use the Australian Bureau of Statistics standard. Therefore you are only looking at Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Hobart, Canberra and Darwin do not qualify.

FESA response time standard is 8 minutes from the time of call to the arrival of the first truck.

Therefore FESA are only meeting their response time standard 50% of the time.

As for comparision for each state.

50th Percentile 90th Percentile
Sydney 6.6 10.4
Melbourne 6.2 8.6
Brisbane 6.4 9.9
Perth 8.0 12.0
Adelaide 7.0 10.0


Therefore the slowest metropolitan fire service in Australia and only meet FESA's own standards 50% of the time to structure fires.

I hope this helps.

[rant]

Statistics can be manipulated to suit an argument.

From page 8.65 (Definitions of key terms and indicators) 50th percentile fire service response times are "The time within which 50 per cent of first fire resources respond." In a structure fire, what you were complaining about in your initial post, you generally will have more than one crew turning out. You don't show any data to see how far away back-up crews happen to be.

In addition, in the Attachment, on the page titled Table 8A.13 (heading is Structure fires and response times to structure fires across geographic areas the notes state (a) Differences between jurisdictions in definitions of response times, geography, personnel mix, and system type (manual or CAD), affect the comparability of response times data. In my book it's like comparing marbles with sponges.

You also forgot to read the sub notes at the bottom of the graph showing the data. b WA response times in the cities, inter regional and regional areas are influenced by volunteer response in support and in remote areas of the state, are influenced by significant travel time to incidents. When you have Armadale, Bassendean, Guildford, Kalamunda, Kwinana, Mundaring, Rockingham, Roleystone, Secret Harbour and Yanchep being manned by volunteers (granted that Armadale, Bassendean, Kwinana and Rockingham are not first response brigades) you should expect the slightly slower response time. In fact you should be PLEASED that the members of the Brigades are getting there, mobilising and getting the job done.

Speaking of getting the job done, if you look at the next part Structure fires (all ignition types) contained to the object/room of origin in Western Australia during 2005/2006 they performed better than in Queensland and South Australia.

Your argument "I am just amazed at the number of fires that are totally lost here." is farcical. In fact W.A. only had 1348 structure fires in 2004/2005. Just less than SA, almost half of QLD, 4 time less than Victoria and nearly 5½ times less than NSW. For the report Total property loss from structure fire (2005-06 dollars) Western Australia (in 2005/2006) ranks lower in $ per person than every state except South Australia. With the cost of houses in Perth being very high (getting to be comparable with Sydney in 2006) it would appear we have very few "total losses" here.

If you don't like the situation maybe you could help the firies get dressed and run in front of the truck ringing a bell telling everyone to get out of the way so that the firies can get there quicker. Even better why don't you join up and show them how it's done. Then, once you have a real understanding of what the crews do, talk to your local MPs and get them to get extra funding for FESA so they can buy more trucks, fire stations, equipment, whatever....

Oh, and once you have a fire station on each street corner maybe you can conjure up another 100 teachers, higher pay for them, reduce crime and solve the global warming problem by Monday.

Slower? Maybe. Ineffective? Definately NOT.

[/rant]

Oh, and 86% of people don't give a stuff about statistics.

WPXZBP wrote:Oh, and 86% of people don't give a stuff about statistics.

Here here, I hated maths when I was at school...still do. All I want to know is, are the big trucks coming, and coming quick, and will they do the job quickly and efficiently with empathy and I know the answer is yes to all of the above.

Remember people there are lies then there are more lies and then there are statistics.

Donga wrote:Remember people there are lies then there are more lies and then there are statistics.

Indeed... you can make the stats fit whatever argument you want.

Out of the 1300 odd structure fires attended the vast majority would have been attended by paid firemen. Therefore the small number attended by volunteers would not vary the times.

It also does not still change the fact that FESA are only meeting their response time standard 50% of the time. When you look at whats currently happing in NSW regarding litigation it maybe not too far away from happening here as well.

All you need to look at is the Half Price Pine fire in Claremont and the City Pharmacy in Hay Street to see the effect of long response times.

Previous reports show there has been a slow increase in the response times here. In part to the recent moving / relocation of a number of stations??

The closure of Spearwood and its relocation to Success. Is it far too south of where it should have been? From where they are now it is a 12 minute response time to reach the edge of their boundary.

Closure of Bedford and their relocation to Malaga. This has created a black hole as now the closest station for much of their old area is Perth.

The relocation of Balcatta to Duncraig means that its right on the back door step of Wangara.

Also the relocation of O'Connor to Murdoch. Again right next to Canning Vale.

Another way to look at it is how many fire stations and what was the population of Perth 15 years ago.

Now look at the present situation. The pace of change is leaving the fire service in its wake.

Currently the fire service here is the cheapest in the country and it shows!!

The ESL clearly needs to be increased greatly (even doubled) from it is presently.

Even to the point of having volunteers working in the city 24/7 to enable an effective fire defence. Yet this maybe a problem as they can't supply enough vehicles presently.

You can run a arguement back and forth till the cows come home and keep denying the obvious but quite simply current information as contained in that report needs to be used as proof in support of.

Just as the Police and Ambulance service used the same information from the Productivity Commission in support of their arguement for more people, stations, vehicles etc etc FESA need to run the same arguement.

But the silence is deafening......

DON'T get started on the ESL!
City of Stirling is the largest area, and raises the most money ESL wise, we have 1 SES unit, and apparently only 1 Fire Station (Osborne Park) I thought Duncraig was part of Stirling, but apparently not. Our SES unit often presents a budget covering reasonable items that we would like to purchase using the ESL money, so that we can get the grants, however, we see very little of it, infact for us the ESL is considered a joke. SES as a whole only gets a small proportion, full time FRS guys and gals however gets a fair majority of it. Yes fair in some respects, but what about for the vollies who don't get paid, depite being a member of a government department.