Crucial firefighting equipment arrives in Shepparton

And as it stood glistening in the Thursday-morning sunlight behind her, state Member for Northern Victoria Wendy Lovell rejoiced.

“I think the firefighters here at Fire Station 75 in Shepparton are absolutely delighted that this piece of equipment is here,” she said.

“They’ll be doing some training this afternoon and will get it online and available for use.”

Leading Firefighter Steve Harris explained the benefits the new equipment would bring to the region’s emergency-response capabilities.

“We support towns that are around Shepparton, we can take this truck out to Tatura, Benalla — any surrounding towns — so it gives us that capability as well,” he said.

“This truck can perform aerial rescues, so any large factories, silos, things like that, it’s going to be perfect for.

“This truck can go to 28m in height and especially with the new buildings (around Shepparton), we’ve got the law courts, (Greater Shepparton Secondary College) have a lot of buildings over 25m as well, so we’ve got those capabilities to perform those rescues at height, which is fantastic.

“(We’re) appreciative that we’ve got the equipment and we’re about serving the community, and it’s going to protect the community of Shepparton and the surrounding communities as well.”

Ms Lovell has been leading the protests against Fire Rescue Victoria’s initial decision to allocate the truck elsewhere, despite it being originally ordered for Shepparton.

“This was a concerted effort by the local community here — a lot of help from you guys in the media, so thank you very much — that has highlighted the issue that the government was trying to [redirect] this truck to Melbourne,” Ms Lovell said.

“Also the UFU (United Firefighters’ Union), who have been fantastic in working with us to make sure this equipment came to Fire Station 75 here in Shepparton.

“The government were wanting to redirect this truck, which was ordered by the CFA to come to the Shepparton station ... to Sunshine in metropolitan Melbourne.

“And it’s been a fantastic thing for our community to see it arrive.

“We have very large facilities for food processing and what we need to be able to do is get a firefighter up in the platform which is attached to this truck so they can direct the hose from height into the centre of those facilities if there’s a fire.

“But also we’ve now had a number of multi-storey buildings coming online in Shepparton — (including) the high school and hospital — and if we need to do a rescue, we can’t do that with the old truck that we had, which was just a hose on a stick.

“This is a much better piece of equipment for doing both firefighting from height and also rescues.”