Four weeks ago WA had a bad fire weather and was looking at a bad fire year. At the time I was wondering why a small amount of equipment could not be moved from the wet Eastern states to support the West.

Since then - http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1...te-fire-breaks

Thinking about it further why couldn"t Emergency Management Australia run a fire management exersize each year say over 6 weeks - last 2 weeks of Jan and 4 weeks of Feb. Location would be chosen at start of Jan and would be the state with the highest fire risk. Each state or body could send a strike team of vehicles and minimal manpower to crew them with crews changed each week. A training program would be provided to specifically improve AIMS accreditation and fire mangement skills. This would be an advanced course for trainee group officers to get them up to speed and possibly give them some real experience. Trainers would need to mentor and monitor.

If a bad day occurs then these resources could be quickly deployed and hopefully get to use some of their skills. Should further crew be required then they could be flown in at short notice.

Funding - well I do not know who but this type of training needs to happen. The Black Saturday inquiry pointed to better fire management training and accreditation.