Newstead CFA celebrated our members and their contribution to the brigade and our broader community with our annual dinner and awards night.

This morning, Newstead brigade played hosts to member from Maldon Fire Brigade for a combined training session, focusing mainly on how we can improve interoperability and familiarizing ourselves with our combined resources.

We spent an hour down at the river using our Bigfill to draw water out of the river and pump it up to Maldon’s pumper and then delivered that water to multiple hose lines including a ground monitor, a large water delivery system anchored to the ground that delivers incredibly high water flow rates, beyond what can be delivered by hand lines. These would be used at large structure fires where significant volumes of water are required over a lengthy period of time. The two appliances worked well together and the amount of water we were able to move was remarkable. Individual members also had an opportunity to experience the force reaction of large volume branches. Used primarily for structure fire response, some of these branches are capable of flow rates up to 570 litres per minute.