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Fire Fighters $70 Million Training Wreck
Just six years ago, the MFB was seen as the benchmark fire service and emergency services training organisation throughout Australasia. Its training facility located in Victoria Street, Abbotsford regularly ran courses attended not just by Victorian firefigheters but also our national and international colleagues. Not now. In late 2002, asbestos discovered in the administration building at Abbotsford had to be removed at a cost of approximately $1 million. Then in 2003, senior MFB executives decided to purchase land at Burnley for a heavily discounted cost – discounted because they knew it to be heavily contaminated. They simultaneously sold off to developers the prime riverfront property that housed the training facility at Abbotsford as well as a block of MFB land at North Laverton, sales which netted around $48 million. |
Six years in Reverse It was over four years later – late 2007 – before the MFB’s training staff were able to move into the new $70 million complex in Burnley. But their trials were not over. Problems discovered at the new complex included:
• No water available for training;
• Engine bays that cannot be used to house fire appliances;
• Windows in a training tower that cannot accommodate ladders used by firefighters;
• Windows that leak extensively into the administration building every time it rains (thank God we’re in a drought!)
All up, 86 (yes, eighty-six!) OH&S issues have been identified at Burnley, and now at the end of 2008, the training complex still cannot train any MFB recruits, officers or specialists in firefighting.
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Here, there and everywhere
The MFB has to send its employees all over Victoria for their training, using the facilities of numerous other organisations, (for example, CFA Fiskville, CFA Bangholme, CFA Sale, Melbourne University at Hawthorn, Royal Melbourne Showgrounds, etc.) at a cost of over $3 million so far. To date, the MFB has put forward no detailed training plan or even contingency plans on how it intends to safeguard its trainers and trainees from the various health hazards identified by the EPA at its $70 million white elephant in Burnley. And have the Bracks and Brumby Governments ever called the MFB’s senior managers to account for their excessive waste of public money? Sad to say, not yet. You wouldn’t want any of these people on call at a fire station. |
