Fire And Rescue Nsw Station 305 Goulburn

Goulburn Fire Station - Fire & Rescue New South Wales (Formerly NSW Fire Brigades)

The Goulburn Fire Brigade has a long history dating back to 1851 when the citizens purchased a manual fire engine for protection against fires in and around the town. How ever the Brigade was not formed until 1885. The original fire station was built in 1890 in Montague St. The early fire engine was a horse drawn turbine engine which required 12 men to operate. This was later replaced with a four cylinder motor engine. In 1909 the Brigade was taken over by the Board of Fire Commissioners of NSW (known as NSW Fire Brigades). In 1971 the firefighters were relocated to a new station at 157 -161 Bourke St. where it is today.

The Brigade now has two fire engines attached to the station. One being a Rescue Pumper and in December 1999 saw the arrival of a “Hazmat Tanker” Appliance. This is a vehicle that combines a 4wd tanker and an Intermediate Hazardous Materials unit. In this day and age there are so many chemicals used and with the increasing number of accidents happening around the state, the NSW Fire Brigades identified a need for these units to be created and installed in country areas.

Some of the equipment carried on this vehicle include; Gas suits, chemical clean-up bins, decontamination showers, spillage booms, chemical pump, breathing apparatus, generator, gas detector, lighting units and a Lap-top computer with links to chemical databases.

Goulburn’s Hazmat Tanker has a large response area and since the unit’s arrival, it has responded to chemical spills on the Southern Highlands, Boorowa, Crookwell, Queanbeyan, Yass, Lake George and Cooma.

After their initial training in dealing with Hazardous Materials, Firefighter’s undergo a 2 day refresher course every year. Together with this and updated chemical database information it prepares our Firefighter’s for dealing with anything that threatens peoples safety or the environment.

All the firefighters attached to the Goulburn are highly trained to be able to handle any emergency that they may be required to attend and all have stories relating to the many different incidents that they have responded to.

The Brigade has responded to many other major emergency’s over the years such as the call to ‘grass alight’ in 1980 which turned out to be the town’s biggest grass fire at which 1500 bales of hay were destroyed at the rear of Giessler Motors. At the time the city was battling drought conditions, with about two weeks water left. The firefighters used half the city’s water to extinguish the fire.

Other major incidents include the Clints building fire, the 1994 bushfires in and around Sydney and the hale storms which devastated Sydney in 1999.

The NSW Fire Brigades had a name change in 2011, and is now known as Fire & Rescue NSW

Duties:

Standard Firefighting station, Secondary Rescue unit (backup for Police Rescue) and Intermediate Hazardous Materials unit.

Appliances:

Hazmat Pumper: Scania P310 DB 4x2 (SEM Build)
Composite: Isuzu FTS 800 4x4 (6-Locker)—MTA Build.

Crews:

5 Permanent firefighters (Day shift - Mon to Fri) and up to 18 Retained firefighters (on call).