Today’s correspondent is

… a senior deputy in an RFS brigade. The area that we respond and to is in the middle of what Police describe as an ice epidemic. Today we had a job (illegal burn) should have been a simple job really attend extinguish depart. Not the case, from the time I stood out of the appliance we were abused and threatened. We informed resident of rules and advised we were extinguishing however he refused us entry which we explained we have right of entry. Long story short he went to pick up a bar off the ground and became very aggressive I In turn removed the crew requested police and staged down the road.

The question I have is NSW Police and NSW ambulance have access to warnings on the location they are responding to and quite often stage until other resources are available to deal with a situation. However, in the RFS we are blind to this information. If the information is available to other emergency services, is it a duty of care that RFS should have access to the same information to protect its members? What’s your thoughts?

The question that I have, and cannot answer, is where do police and ambulance get that information that it is alleged that they have? I infer (but do not know) it is from their past history, that is they have it as their own crews have reported the matter.   That is, it is their own internal information being shared among their own employees, rather than centralised information that they share but not with the RFS.

Given my correspondent’s experience I do not know if there is a system where the RFS can record that information so that if there is another call to that address, then that information can be passed onto responding crews. It might also be prudent, and reasonable to expect that if the RFS was called by police or ambulance eg if police were on scene and it was the police who observed the fire, that they would pass on any necessary warning to the RFS. 

To limit myself to the legal issue the problem is about confidentiality of information not just the information about past incidents at the address but also information that the police may want to keep confidential about investigations etc. 

If I’m correct and there is no central database where reports on emergency calls to addresses are required and which is accessible by all the emergency services, then it is impossible to imagine how the RFS could have the information that my correspondent would like to receive.

If such a database were to exist questions would arise as to:

  • Who could enter data onto it?
  • What type of data could be recorded?
  • What has to be the level of satisfaction that the information recorded is accurate?
  • How long would it be there (because people move, and grow up, so an issue 6 months, or 6 years ago may not be an issue now)
  • Who could access it?
  • How would it be secured?
  • What steps would be in place to ensure that it did not in effect discriminate against groups on irrelevant grounds (see Questions of racial discrimination (February 17, 2023))?

Conclusion

The question I was asked was ‘If the information is available to other emergency services …  should [the RFS] have access to the same information to protect its members?’ but that begs the question of whether information, other than a services own internal records, is available to each service.  If there is no central repository of such information (and I don’t think there is but I wait to be corrected if I’m wrong) then there is no information that can be passed to the RFS other than information held by the RFS. 

Creating such a central information portal would, or should, require a great deal of careful consideration.

This blog is made possible with generous financial support from (in alphabetical order) the Australasian College of Paramedicine, the Australian Paramedics Association (NSW), the Australian Paramedics Association (Qld), Natural Hazards Research Australia, NSW Rural Fire Service Association and the NSW SES Volunteers Association. I am responsible for the content in this post including any errors or omissions. Any opinions expressed are mine, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or understanding of the donors.