And apart from the bushfires, the constant blackouts have also made the Fire Department's job a lot more difficult. Despite being an essential service, they do not have a generator, and that affects their phone lines. And on top of that, when BWS cuts off the water, they're unable to refill their trucks.
Kenneth Mortis, Station Supervisor, NFS
"The effect with that is once we are out of electricity, then there is no means for us to receive calls of an emergency, everything goes down. Our one-hour backup battery supply that we have, that only lasts another once that goes down."
"So the entire phone line system is down. Our communication during that time is via runner, whether it be somebody comes into the station and informs of a fire, there's no other way. And even more so, the other utility company, when BWS or when the country or when the city experiences loss of water, for whatever reason, that impedes our firefighting tactics as well."
"While we will defensively fight fires with whatever type of water we have, whether it be the sea, the canal, the rivers, but when we return to the station, we need to refill up with water from the hydrant."
"And if the city is out of water, then we need to do the drastic measures, which would probably fill the tank with saltwater from the sea, which we all know it corrode the tank, and we don't know how long when these are utility goes out, how long it's going to take."
"I think it was sometime last week, it was almost close to 24 hours without water. During that time, we had an emergency response whereby a sofa in a yard near the wesley church, that sofa was lit on fire by passers by."
"The guys had previously returned from an emergency, and we were in the middle of filling up from the hydrant. The water pressure is like super slow. That took us like three times the amount of time to fill."
"So these are the variables that we're looking at when we have a shortage of electricity, shortage of water supply, you know, everything has a trickle-down effect, and no doubt we are right in the middle of a trickle-down effect."
"So whether it be the loss of electricity, we can't receive emergency call. If there is no water in the city, we can't fill your tanks the way we should. And then that good old negative, cliche you always hear we no have no water, comes into effect."
