Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner Greg Mullins labelled Union NSW’s revelations of fire station closures in the Maitland district “untrue” and “irresponsible” as four stations remained closed on Thursday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Commissioner Mullins said union claims that the Maitland district would be left in a potentially disastrous and life-threatening situation without fire station coverage on any day was “alarming and outright wrong”.
Union NSW yesterday stood by its warnings and confirmed Abermain, Bellbird, Kearsley and Paxton fire stations remained closed on Thursday, with Kurri Kurri restricted to the use of its tanker.
Maitland operated as an on-call station, which Commissioner Mullins confirmed in a statement to the Mercury on Thursday afternoon.
The station manager was the only firefighter on the premises with one of the permanent firefighters sent to the Branxton station and the other two on leave, Unions NSW spokeswoman Mary Yaager said.
“We have spoken to local firefighters and we stand by the comments published in the Mercury on Thursday. This situation is real, it is happening and the public will be impacted by this cost-cutting.”
Ms Yaager said the absence of a permanent crew at Maitland during business hours blew-out the response time from 60 seconds to up to 10 minutes.
Commissioner Mullins said East Maitland, Telarah and Morpeth fire stations were online to respond but acknowledged Morpeth could be temporarily closed if the station did not have a safe crew level of retained firefighters to respond.
He said this had been happening at Morpeth for four years.
“East Maitland and Telarah stations will not be affected by these arrangements and any staffing shortfalls at these stations will be filled,” Commissioner Mullins said.
He also said Maitland station’s two trucks would always be online with the crew sourced from permanent or retained firefighters. “We regularly move resources to maintain coverage and I assure residents that they are not at risk,” Commissioner Mullins said.
Mr Mullins said the Industrial Relations Commission made a ruling on November 16 that a small number of stations could be taken offline when there were staff vacancies because the Fire Brigade Employees Union had failed to suggest other ways of curbing a blowout in overtime costs. He said the union was intentionally misleading and trying to alarm the public.
