WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

Was just browsing the WaFire website and found a pic of the Gosnells ICV.
It had "Forward Control Unit" splashed across the side. Any idea what this means?
http://wafire.fotopic.net/p37927100.html

As far as I know it means the same as Incident Control Vehicle. Don't think it's really got a separate definition but happy to be corrected if anyone knows more!

Mug wrote:Was just browsing the WaFire website and found a pic of the Gosnells ICV.
It had "Forward Control Unit" splashed across the side. Any idea what this means?
http://wafire.fotopic.net/p37927100.html

Forward Control Point these days is more about the 'place' rather than the 'vehicle', though we usually just call it the 'Control Point'. FCU, MCU, FCP etc are names that were used alot in the past before ICV came about.

and, I believe the vehicle in the pic was the Cockburn's (based at South Coogee), not the Gosnells one.. it's apparently now at Serpentine-Jarrahdale?

Fastlane wrote:Forward Control Point these days is more about the 'place' rather than the 'vehicle', though we usually just call it the 'Control Point'. FCU, MCU, FCP etc are names that were used alot in the past before ICV came about.

and, I believe the vehicle in the pic was the Cockburn's (based at South Coogee), not the Gosnells one.. it's apparently now at Serpentine-Jarrahdale?

correct

On one of the many courses I've done, (I believe it was Maintain Safety at a Fesa Incident scene) the idea of the Forward Control point was to have a marshalling area from which to dispatch teams. The command Incident Management Team would be located in a nearby location.
For example A search being run out the back of a police station, there is an ICV with Operations, Planning, Logistics, and Incident controller officers, and maybe small teams under them such as a comms team. 20 metres down the road is a park, all crews are told to report to the park and send only the team leader to the control post. This area would be designated as the forward command post, depending on how the IC wants the incident run they might have Logistics at the FCP if they wanted etc.
Anyone that went to the rockingham storms earlier this season would have seen the split setup, Comms I believe was operating from within the bus, and Operations were working in the unit Ops room.
As fastlane pointed out though, not something that's very common, certainly I've only seen it twice.

Going back several years, the BFB term for ICV was FCU or FCV - Forward Control Unit/Vehicle, and WAFB used MCU - Mobile Control Unit. I think it was around 5/6 years ago that alot of common terminology across Australia was brought in, and alot of callsigns in WA were changed. This is around the same time BFS dropped 'Fast Attack' for 'Light Tanker' and FRS 'Medium Tanker' became 2.4U and so on.

Listening to the FESA stream you sometimes hear the term Medium Tanker being used.

Yeah, was in the car with one of the more experienced SO's the other day and he was talking about Medium Tankers, I thought it was interesting to note.

I think DEC still refers to their LTs as Fast Attack, crew cab 2.4/3.4 as Gang Truck and Single Cab 3.4/4.4 as Heavy Duty.

dlcat1 wrote:I think DEC still refers to their LTs as Fast Attack, crew cab 2.4/3.4 as Gang Truck and Single Cab 3.4/4.4 as Heavy Duty.

there l/Ts are called light units

wasaint wrote:there l/Ts are called light units

Thanks wasaint. Theres a few people I know that still call them that but I now know what to call them.