NOTICE OF CFSVA

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

to be held at

Transport Training Centre

17 Wirriga St, Regency Park

Tuesday October 12 2010, 10am

This is an election year –elections will be held for the following positions:

President,

Vice Presidents (2)

3 Executive Positions

CFSVA representative on State OHS Committee

9.1.1       Nominations shall be received four weeks prior to the Association AGM, in writing and shall include the nominator, the seconder, acceptance by the nominee and a short resume of the nominee

9.1.2       All nominations, including resumes, shall be circulated to branch delegates at least two weeks prior to the AGM

14.1    The Executive shall consist of the President, the Senior Vice President and the Junior Vice-President, the Executive Officer and three other members of the Committee.  The Executive is to conduct the business of the Association between meetings of the Committee, at which meetings they are to appraise the Committee of decisions taken and to make recommendations for consideration of the Committee

The AGM will be followed by a General meeting. Please forward any agenda items to state office by Monday September 27  2010

All members welcome  Lunch provided

Please RSVP on wendy.shirley@cfsva.org.au or fax 8244 6400

Wendy Shirley

CFSVA Executive Director

August 24  2010

Presidents Report August 2010

A few weeks ago I was emailed a copy of a letter sent to CFS Group Officer  Mike Arnold from Senior Sergeant Peter Sims of Waikerie Police. This letter praised the work and professionalism of Cadell and Morgan Brigades when attending a vehicle accident at Cadell recently.

While no one joins the CFS for the rewards or thankyous it is pleasing to see that the time, effort and training of volunteers is sometimes recognised. I am sure that most CFS brigades who have had experience in Road Crash would have acted in a similar professional manner; although the actions by the members of the Cadell and Morgan brigades must have been exempla nary.

In the rural areas of South Australia there are many one man police stations and the cooperation between SAPOL and CFS needs to work. Usually at a vehicle accident in rural SA, the single police officer is busy taking details and talking to witnesses etc, therefore traffic control, road detours, the preservation of the scene, organising equipment that is needed, is all left up to the CFS officer in charge and their crew. As well as this many brigades also do the clean up as there is just no one else to do it.

As in the letter from SSIC Sims the attending CFS members took on the role of comforting friends of the deceased person and keeping them from entering the scene and they also comforted the driver of the other vehicle, none of these things are in the CFS manual as roles that have to be carried out but they just did it.

The perception of the general community is that CFS volunteers cut people out of cars and fight bushfires or house fires, they do not realise all the little things that make CFS a truly professional organisation. Training is not the only thing that makes us good at our job; it is also compassion, care, thoughtfulness, cooperation and commitment.  These traits are what made the work of Cadell and Morgan so impressive and perhaps even we as an organisation forget this sometimes. It’s not the shiny white trucks or the latest equipment or the yellow turnout gear, it is how we go about doing our job that really stands out and prompts people such as SSIC Sims to write such a letter.

So next time you finish an incident and have a quick debrief back at the station don’t only think about how the obvious went, think about how the not quite so obvious parts of the incident went and I think you will find that instead of being a good brigade you could find yourself being part of a great brigade.

Ken Schutz AFSM

President CFSVA