Page 4693 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 31 October 2017
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This was the first time the event has been held at that ESA headquarters in Fairbairn. Hosting the open day at this site provided an opportunity to showcase a whole range of emergency management activities and to educate the community about taking shared responsibility for safety.
ESA staff conducted tours inside their facilities and allowed the public into the incident management room, emergency coordination centre, the planning room, the media room and ESA workshops. I want to thank in particular Darren Cutrupi for his work in showing people around those areas and explaining the work that they do there. It proved to be extremely popular. Also popular was all the equipment on display, skills demonstrations, food and drink stalls, a petting zoo and helicopter joy flights.
As I walked around the site, the one thing that particularly stood out and gave me great pleasure to see was how proud ESA volunteers and staff are of their roles and how passionately they speak about the work they perform. The ESA’s mission is “working together to care and protect, through cohesive operations, collaborative management and a unified executive”. This was clearly on display at the open day. Volunteers and staff across the ESA, including each of the four services—ACT Ambulance Service, ACT Fire & Rescue, ACT State Emergency Service and ACT Rural Fire Service—worked as “one ESA” in hosting an extremely successful educational and fun event for the community.
MS ORR: Could the minister please advise how ESA’s state-of-the-art equipment and vehicles showcased to the community at the open day?
MR GENTLEMAN: I thank Ms Orr for the supplementary. As indicated in my previous answer, I walked away from the open day with a great feeling of comfort and reassurance that in the event of any emergency incident we have the appropriate plans and procedures in place and some truly outstanding emergency services volunteers and staff to protect the people of Canberra.
Many vehicles were on display at the open day, including the Bronto, pumpers, hazmat vehicles and heavy and medium tankers. On display as well were compressed air foam systems, ambulances, storm response vehicles, helicopters, platforms on demand, flood rescue boats and community fire unit trailers.
I was pleased to see the continued police involvement at this event too. The display of their vehicles—the jet ski, motorbike, quad bike and bearcat—was very well received by the community, as was the return of the original Constable Kenny.
On display also was the new ACT Rural Fire Service heavy tanker. On Friday, 27 October I had the pleasure of handing over this new tanker on behalf of the government. The tanker will be based at Jerrabomberra brigade in Symonston. I have a big shout out to Pat, Meg and the whole team at Jerra for the fantastic work they do for the community. The new appliance is a boost for the firefighting efforts over the ACT summer season. The vehicle can carry 3,600 litres of water and comes fitted
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