The Weekly Advertiser – Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Page 1

Vol. No. Vol. 2418No. 3727

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A FREE PUBLICATION FROM YOUR LOCAL RADIO STATIONS 3WM AND MIXXFM

Wednesday, January 13, 2022 2016 Wednesday, March 30,

GETTING BACK TO NATI: Robert Isaacson, left, and Hutch Hickmott, were right in the spirit of the occasion during a street parade as part of a three-day combined Natimuk Show and Backto-Natimuk celebration. A weekend of activities in Natimuk commemorated 150 years of settlement in the town. Visitors travelled from across Victoria and interstate for the event organised by Arapiles Historical Society, Natimuk A and P Society and Back-to-Natimuk trustees. More, pages 22 and 23. Picture: PAUL CARRACHER

Daylight Saving ends Sunday, April 3

Move your clock back one hour at 3am

Fire phone anxiety N

BY MICHAEL SCALZO

orthern Grampians community fire-fighting leaders remain fearful unreliable telecommunication services continue to threaten lives of people in bushfire-vulnerable farm and parkland.

Country Fire Authority representatives from Laharum, Brimpaen, Wonwondah and Green Lake districts are providing a united front in expressing frustration over the issue. They are particularly concerned about poor northern Grampians mobilephone coverage services they believe have deteriorated further since January. Northern Grampians is a farming and popular tourist region and has for the past decade had recognition as a service ‘blackspot’ zone. Despite communication providers and authorities responding with tech-

assorted ‘word-of-mouth’ communication, managing the crisis would become ‘unthinkable’. “Currently, we can’t be across any kind of evacuation situation, we won’t know who has decided to stay or leave, or where people at risk are,” he said. He said with so many variables at play during a fire emergency, current telecommunication coverage could make some evacuations unpractical. He said it might be too dangerous to send trucks and personnel into ‘risky’ situations without reliable and up-todate specific information. Mr Dumesny also said the region’s poor service coverage rendered the State Government’s official Supplementary Alerting Service app for emergency services personnel partially useless. The app, which uses mobile-phone

nological upgrades in the area, telephone landlines continue to be the only reliable communication for many northern Grampians residents. Laharum CFA captain Luke Dumesny said mobile service before January was ‘bearable’, but it was now ‘beyond a joke’. “The problems begin even just to make a triple-zero call. If someone is out in the paddock, you have no chance of reaching them on your phone,” he said. “We can manage the initial emergency call using our radios, but that’s just the start of our problems. What about organising equipment or personnel or anything collective fire services require in that sort of situation?” Mr Dumesny said while eventually ‘word’ might get out to other CFA leaders and emergency services through

data, can notify fire crews of emergencies, which brigades are responding to a blaze and their arrival estimates, as well as inter-CFA message capabilities and weather forecasts. It has quickly become an important emergency-services communication tool since its State Government launch in 2020. Mr Dumesny said the app’s main use was to alert fire crews in the region about incidents. “The app just isn’t serviceable without mobile-network data and it might update whenever we luck-out with network coverage. So, while we aren’t flying completely blind in that regard, it is a lowest common denominator situation with the app. If everyone isn’t across the information at the same time, really, no-one is.” Continued page 3

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