National support to sustain local effort

摘要

Asimilar scene played out in the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services Headquarters in Brisbane earlier in the summer and continues to play out in the Emergency Management Victoria State Control Centre in Melbourne; in the SA Country Fire Service Headquarters in Adelaide and the ACT Emergency Services Agency in Canberra. There is a unity of purpose and effort, and while this is expected, there are national support arrangements playing out simultaneously to support state support requests. In one corner of the massive NSW RFS operations centre, the 'Interstate Liaison Unit' (ILU) has representatives from nearly all states and territories, overseeing their jurisdictions' contribution to the overall effort. The ILU is coordinated by the National Resource Sharing Centre (NRSC) Deployment Manager. The NRSC is a function of AFAC, the National Council for Fire and Emergency Services, which coordinates the requesting of resources from across the country and, if need be, from overseas. The NRSC operates from the AFAC offices in Melbourne and ensures a truly nationally coordinated effort by receiving resourcing requests and seeking to fill them from other jurisdictions. To date there have been over 6,000 interstate movements, supporting NSW in particular, with a further 307 personnel from New Zealand, 292 from the USA and 239 from Canada all contributing to the fire-response effort.