Spotlight on . . . Alistair Drayton, Bellarine Group Officer

by Leith Hillard, CFA Public Affairs

Since Alistair Drayton signed up as a CFA volunteer ten years ago, his career as a restaurateur has prospered. He is currently the Group Officer of the Bellarine Group, which comprises nine brigades, and has been a Lieutenant at Wallington brigade for the past ten years.

“The restaurant business is really about chaos management,” Alistair says. “Staff are constantly changing so you have to be a strong leader or things fall apart.

“At CFA I’ve been in management and co-ordination roles and that’s really helped my people management skills. CFA is a two-way street. The leadership courses can lead to better career jobs.

“You have to be positive and inspire people to reach forward and follow you, while also being one of them. They like to see that you can do what they do, so I always move the hose myself! It’s all definitely helped me manage my business.

Alistair was appointed Incident Controller of January’s Elaine/Morrisons fire in Region 7. One of the largest fires of the summer so far, it burnt more than 500ha.

Aftermath of the Elaine/Morrisons fire. Click on the image to see more photos.

“It was a Level 3 incident started by a spark from a tractor near a hayshed,” he says, “but that shed ended up being the only structure we lost. It was a 48-hour fire – 72 hours including mopping up – with a high level of complexity in unfavourable weather conditions so it had terrible potential.

"On the first night there was a high temperature and low relative humidity with gusty wind changes. Usually fires settle down at night, of course, but that wasn’t the case here; it was very unstable.

“Firefighters took the opportunity to pull the fire up once it got into the grasslands, with great consolidation work being done overnight and containment lines established. We also put secondary lines in place but the fire got out in one section of steep terrain and caused us some bother for a while.”

There were 275 people on the fireground on the first night working around the perimeter while an aircrane and four other helicopters provided air attacks. While most of the fire was on DSE land, the fire was CFA managed because of the risk to assets - the townships of Morrisons, Meredith, Steiglitz, Moorabool Valley, Pioneer Ridge and Ballark were all given fire warnings. In the end, however, there were no stock losses and only 80ha of private land was burnt.

“I miss the ‘pointy end’ of firefighting,” Alistair says. "But my enjoyment of the CFA management roles balances it out."

“Paul Stacchino and Bob Barry [from Region 7] have given me some great opportunities. I’ve been to Oregon, Idaho and California in the US to operate as a Divisional Manager during various fires and I've also managed floods. America was amazing and when I got back I was sent to the Tenterfield fire in northern NSW where the fire was fought using some of the tactics I’d just learnt. People were deployed differently."

Alistair is enthusiastic about the Australian Inter-service Incident Management System (AIIMS), established during the mid 1980s. The Incident Control System (ICS) is a part of AIIMS that CFA uses to manage incidents. The systems are also used in the US, allowing for the easy exchange of personnel.

And not to forget Minimum Skills. “It’s the single best thing CFA had implemented from my point of view,” Alistair says. “The willingness to help has always been there but now the levels of confidence and competency have gone through the roof.”

“CFA knows that volunteers have the depth of experience to deal with these sorts of incidents and that’s a good feeling. CFA is enhancing the role of the volunteer. There’s no us and them: we are CFA.”