Vacy Rural Fire Brigade

Vacy Rural Fire Brigade, part of the NSW Rural Fire Service, the world's largest volunteer fire service. For incident information visit www. rfs. nsw. gov. au

This page is for Brigade information for the general public and updates for the members of the Vacy Rural Fire Brigade, and the local community.

Vacy Rural Fire Brigade was formed in July 1944 and was originally known as the Paterson- Vacy Bushfire Brigade. For the first 28 years of existence, the Captain was the local police officer of the Paterson Police Station.

In 1972 the Brigade elected its first local fire Captain. In 1974 after operating for 30 years, the Brigade made the decision to split into two seperate Brigades and become the Paterson Bushfire Brigade and the Vacy Bushfire Brigade with the original Blitz tanker going to Vacy and the Bedford tanker to Paterson.

The Vacy Bushfire Brigade's Chev Blitz tanker was housed in a local private shed while work commenced on building a station. In 1976 the Brigade moved into its new 2 bay station.

Shortly after the Blitz was replaced by a 6WD Studebaker tanker which saw 10 years of service with the brigade. The brigade also purchased an old Land Rover which was fitted out to become the brigades second vehicle. The Brigade continued with these less than ideal vehicles until 1986 when with a new approach from fire control, the Brigade set about building an Acco 510A Cat2 vehicle. This was a great improvement on the Studebaker.

In 1990, the Brigade started to upgrade to Department supplied tankers with a steady progression up to the current time, where we now have a dual cab Isuzu Cat1 and a dual cab Mitsubishi Canter Cat7. Over this period after extending its original station with a meeting room in 1986, a decision was made that the station was too small and structurally unsound to continue operation, so a new large capacity 2 bay station and meeting room was built. This was later extended to 3 bays in 2007.

Vacy Brigade was a keen competitor at field days having attended the regional and state championships for 9 years in a row between 1993 and 2002, finishing second at the State Championships twice. Today the Brigade has about 20 active members who are committed to providing a service to their community and other areas.

The members participate in a wide variety of fundraising, catering for visiting groups, running a BBQ at the local festival, and working at the local rodeo. The Brigade has always made themselves available to go on out of area commitments and have attended large fires throughout the state over the years.

The Vacy area has diversified from once being predominately an agriculture area to now being made up of small acreage holdings, city based farmers and being the location of the Eaglereach Wilderness Resort, a 40 bed luxury lodge mountain top tourist retreat.

The Vacy Brigade will continue to service their district long into the future.