THE new Lucas fire station is being credited with reducing emergency response times in the Sebastopol region.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
CFA response statistics for the three months to the end of March, which were released yesterday, show that 96 per cent of all call outs in Sebastopol were responded to within eight minutes.
The strong collaboration between the CFA and local fire stations is seen as the major driving force which has seen call out average times for the region slashed to 7 minutes and 26 seconds.
The strong result is a marked turnaround after data released in October last year showed that only 71 per cent of all call outs at Sebastopol were responded to within eight minutes.
Ballarat has five CFA regions. Of these, Ballarat City handles the majority of call outs with 90 per cent responded to within 6 minutes and 4 seconds. In all 97 per cent are responded to within the state standard eight minutes.
Wendouree residents face the longest wait on average with only 73 per cent of calls responded to within eight minutes. The other regions are Ballarat (83 per cent) and Lucas (89 per cent).
The Paddys Drive station which opened in December, and was announced as receiving 10 new fire fighters yesterday, is seen one of a major reasons behind the improvement in Sebastopol.
CFA District Operations Manager Brett Boatman said there had been a range of improvements at the Sebastopol CFA including new access areas for volunteers.
“Our service delivery standard that we’ve achieved at Sebastopol has increased over the last period of time,” he said.
“Other areas including Ballarat and Wendouree have remained largely the same.
“We continue to work with the brigades where the service delivery standard is below where we need it to be to try and lift that.
“But the reason we are standing here today is due to the work of the Lucas fire brigade and also the work of the Ballarat City fire brigade and the career staff who work so hard to support our CFA brigages.
“It means the customer who makes a 000 call within Ballarat is getting a fire truck to attend in the prescribed time.”