Southern Men put through their paces Date Posted: Sep 30, 2015

A day of theory and action unfolded on Saturday 26 September with Crews from Goose Bay supported by members from Okiwi Bay and Blenheim taking part in the Safety around aircraft and load water and water additives training course in Kaikoura.

Crews assembled at the community hall where they received tutoring in working safely with aircraft, along with some exercises that tested the teams around logistics.

When dealing with aircraft, they are logistics heavy especially when using water and foam.

 After a great lunch (thanks Danny/Pam) and a couple of quiz's it was time to get into the real action.

Crews were briefed by Marlborough Helicopters owner/pilot Owen Dodson, around the do’s and don’ts when working around aircraft.

For many this was the first time they were required to load a monsoon bucket along with being flown to the top of a hill where there were required to disembark from the machine while on a slope, then required to embark using another location

Crews were shown how quick and effective dipping from a 10,000 litre dam was. Only one pump operator would be used to keep it topped up verse hot filling tiring up 4-6 people depending on the number of deliveries per fill site.  Filling buckets is a high risk function so where possible we plan to use portable dams or truck trailer dip dams, reducing the risk to our ground crews.  Although we want to reduce the number of times we use crews to fill buckets we must keep our crews current with this role through training exercises such as this.

A big thanks has to be given to all the volunteers who gave up their Saturday to undertake this training and to Graham Lamond DPRFO in Kaikoura for sorting the hall and training location.