Rural Fire Service shed replaced 15 months after bushfire destruction

26 February 2021

Published by https://www.abc.net.au/

AUSTRALIA – It has been a long time coming for the members of the Rainbow Flat Rural Fire Service, south of Taree on the NSW Mid North Coast.

Fifteen months after their previous shed was destroyed in some of the worst bushfires on record, they again have a shed to work from.

Brigade captain Robert Derbyshire said it had been a challenging time.

“Just getting over the initial shock of losing our station and going on from there,” he said.

“The brigade as a whole, I think, is recovering pretty well. There’s pretty good morale and we’ve got quite a few new members.”

Despite the loss, which also included two homes of members of the brigade and others in the surrounding community, the crew kept working, finishing up the fire season and then responding to car accidents at a rate of about one a week.

“We were lucky enough to have members in our brigade who could house our truck, just up the road,” Mr Derbyshire said.

“So we have been working out of there for the past 15–16 months; that’s been really good.”

But it’s “very exciting” to be moving into the new shed, which he said was “probably three times at least bigger than what we had”.

“We’re really looking forward to getting into our a new station and operating from that,” he said.

Acting manager for the Mid Coast district, Guy Duckworth, described the official opening of the new shed as a highlight and commended the brigade for its ongoing work.

“The brigade hasn’t stopped,” he said.

“Many private businesses who made donations of site sheds and other bits and pieces of equipment have enabled the brigade to keep moving forward and keep assisting the community.

Salvaging history

Decades of the brigade’s history was lost in the fire but some items have been salvaged, including the old flashing light and siren used to alert members to emergencies before the days of pagers and mobile phones.

“We’ve got a bit of history from the station. Even though we did lose a lot of the older stuff, which we can’t replace, we’ve got some and we’ll start rebuilding,” Mr Derbyshire said.

They also planned to restore an old firefighting trailer, originally used in the 1970s.

“We’ve got an old tanker trailer from the early days of Rainbow Flat that’s been stored over the years at various members’ places,” he said.

“It’s a project we’re going to work on, to restore it to its former glory.”