The NSW Rural Fire Service believes community safety is not at risk here on the Far South Coast despite having to take firefighting vehicles off the road.
We can exclusively reveal that a check found 10 of the 35 local Cat 9 vehicles belonging to Brigades between Batemans Bay and the Victorian border are overweight and are not legally road worthy.
Of the 35 in the Far South Coast District, four are currently off the road while six others have had restrictions placed on them.
The total number across the state under review is more than 520.
RFS Deputy Commissioner Peter McKecknie said the impacted vehicles are light units designed to help firefighters access tight areas a large fire truck can’t go.
“People who see them around on the roads recognise them across a range of brands that we use. Ford Rangers and Toyota Landcruisers. These are the smallest of our firefighting appliances,” Deputy Commissioner McKecknie said.
“What’s emerged for us is due to design changes over the years, you know, more and more equipment that has been looked at to carry on these vehicles. We’ve found a number of them that are either close to or in some instances, either overweight overall, or on, on either the front or the rear axle,” he said.
“It’s an issue that’s very live for us and we’ve got to work through across most of the state, if not all of the state. But in particularly in some local areas.
“Our big focus right here, right now is about making sure we have good accurate data so we know the exact circumstance for every vehicle. As we learn that we’re recording that to see whether they might be subject to future action.
“For those where there is a weight issue, be it overall, or on one of the axles, what we’re doing is, we’re either removing enough equipment and coming back to just critical equipment that you must carry safely and effectively operate and to bring it under that weight, or in some extreme instances, we’ve taken some off-road, offline so we can work through it, be it a certified upgrade, or if there’s actually engineering work required to bring it back to be compliant.”
The issue came to light after being raised by Far South Coast brigades.
“I’ve got to say it was through some really good work down on the Far South Coast, local brigades in conjunction with our district office down there, through part of their annual checks,” Deputy Commissioner McKecknie said.
“They were actually looking at the mass, the weight and mass of some of their vehicles in an effort to make sure they were remaining compliant and they discovered that some vehicles had some weight issues,” he said.
“They brought that to the attention of our fleet team. Once we went through the work of identifying down there exactly what was happening we then looked at it and said, you know what, a good way to deal with this is to make sure we weigh every appliance and know exactly where we stand across the state.”
The NSW RFS believe it will take a number of months to completely rectify the issue right across the state.
“Look, at this time of the year, we’re coming out of that, you know, the heightened bushfire danger period so the effect is less. We would have never wanted this to happen but you to be able have to work through it now is better than having to work through it in the height of summer. Other appliances are available to brigades, where we need to, just so we can keep our functions going like hazard reduction work. We can move other light appliances around if need be to ensure we can continue to provide service,” he said.
