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  • 2 days ago
A regional CFA brigade has warned its members are being exposed to carcinogens due to a lack of basic station facilities, forcing them to take contaminated gear home.

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00:00Well here at Axe Creek we are literally just a tin shed. We don't have anywhere
00:05for us to change, to store our gear, to wash our hands or to meat at all. There's
00:13no change facilities for women or for men. There's no change facilities at all.
00:20All of our members store their turnout gear in the back of their cars which is
00:28highly dangerous given the risks that come with storing contaminated gear in
00:34your car. If we do use that breathing apparatus we've then got to come back to
00:39the station and to clean the gear in buckets. It's just not good enough. The
00:46carcinogenics that we have at any fire will be in our turnout gear and we
00:53just get changed here on the apron or in the shed and then store our contaminated
00:59gear in our car. If you think about you know what you've got in your car, you
01:04know who's getting in your car, your children are getting in your car. A lot
01:08of stations now actually have showers so that when you do come back from an
01:12incident you can take your gear off, you can go and shower and get rid of all of
01:17those contaminations before you get into your car and take it all home with you.
01:22We need new facilities here. We need appropriate facilities to be able to keep
01:28our members safe. We were on a list to get a new station however because we were
01:33so far down that list we decided to remove ourselves from that list and add
01:38ourselves to a station refurb list. That would mean that we would keep this
01:44existing station and we would just have something added on to it. We've been
01:48first or second on that list for many years now. There seems to have been little
01:54to no movement at all. We need a change and we need something done soon.
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