Ahead of a predicted horror fire season, United Firefighters Union secretary Peter Marshall, Across Victoria Alliance chairman Andrew Weidemann and CFA Volunteers Group president John Houston have written a joint open letter calling for urgent action as the state enters a high-risk bushfire season with a fleet they say is increasingly aged, unreliable and unsafe.
Parliament's Public Accounts and Estimates Committee was told last year that the 2025/26 budgets for Fire Rescue Victoria, CFA and SES had been slashed by a collective $165 million as compared to the 2023/24 budgets.
Mr Houston said volunteer firefighters were stepping up and fighting fires without the trucks and equipment they needed.
“People give their time, their skills and often their own safety to protect their communities,” Mr Houston said.
“Asking them to also absorb the consequences of systemic under-investment is not just unfair. It is dangerous.”
The open letter says many fire trucks currently in service across CFA, Fire Rescue Victoria and other agencies are well beyond their recommended replacement age. At the same time, fuel reduction activity on public land remains well below levels recommended following major bushfire inquiries, despite worsening fire conditions.
The organisations are calling on the Victorian Government to urgently:
- Address the ageing emergency services fleet
- Restore fuel-reduction activity to evidence-based levels
- Engage openly with firefighter and volunteer representatives on sustainable, transparent funding arrangements
“These risks are foreseeable and preventable,” Mr Houston said.
“Addressing them now is essential to protecting firefighters, volunteers and the Victorian community this summer.”
While the CFA has gradually replaced some older trucks there are still some trucks being used that the volunteers believe are putting their lives at risk.
In the letter, the CFA Volunteers Group said: “We have written repeatedly to you, the Treasurer, and the Minister for Emergency Services, outlining how frontline firefighters are being forced to defend life and property using a fleet that is aged, unreliable, and increasingly unsafe. Those warnings have been repeatedly and systematically ignored.”
Chesney Vale CFA captain Mike Dodgson said the prospect of facing a burn-over while on the rear deck of the older trucks was “scary”.
His branch, based in the rural area north of Benalla, regularly fields about 12 active volunteers and although their tanker is a more modern one, he knows there are some trucks in the Benalla group that are two-wheel drive, not air-conditioned and single cabs, meaning they can only support three people inside.
For those trucks, volunteers on the rear deck have only spray and blanket protection.
“There’s no room to get into the cabin in the event of a burn-over,” Mr Dodgson said.
He participated in a strike team sent interstate in 1994 and while the Hino truck was a newer one, at the time, the same model is still being used by some brigades in the Benalla group.
The Chesney Vale brigade assisted in the recent Goomalibee fire across two days.
Mr Dodgson is critical of the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund, which was introduced while budgets to the emergency services were being cut.
“It’s just a tax,” he said.
“Are we going to see any of it in new equipment?”
