RFS recruitment drive for next fire season

RFS Mitigation at Davidson Oval – Lachlan Sutherland from Cowra, Kieran Boney from Brewarrina and Mark Sandry from Dubbo. Photo TWH

The Rural Fire Service held a recruitment drive in Bourke and Brewarrina last week, in a bid to fill vacancies in its fire mitigation teams.

Community Risk Manager for the RFS Western Region Tim Heslop, said the concept of the mitigation teams was a rapidly growing component of the work done by the RFS in preventative firefighting measures and the recruitment drive was a practical demonstration of the skills and demands of the role for potential applicants.

In Bourke, the demonstration was held at Davidson Oval where the mitigation team took applications from nine potential candidates. There are currently four vacancies available for indigenous applicants in Bourke and two vacancies at Brewarrina.

Mr Heslop said the RFS was particularly keen to make sure First Nations people were a primary focus of the recruitment drive, although applications were open to anyone who met the criteria.

“We have the recruitment process going on for positions in a couple of crews in the far west and several teams across the state, targeting First Nations communities primarily, but not limited to that,” he said.

“The indigenous mitigation teams are all part of the RFS Area Mitigation and back in May we held an information session to introduce candidates to what is involved and how to go about the application process.

“We realised during that session that we were missing some vital practical components and we wanted to demonstrate what the work involved, the equipment that was used and the physical assessments.

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