RFS update

Hi all. Just a quick update on what I have been up to with the RFS. As promised in a previous post I said I would let you know how I went with my Advanced Fire fighting assessment. It went well. We had our practical pumping assessment first which presented a couple of scenarios that we had to interpret, identify the best action and execute our techniques to the satisfaction of the assessors. The guy I was partnered with from Winmalee had no problems. Next was the theory. There were three separate exam papers. One was Advanced Firefighting Principles, Advanced Firefighting Technical and Mapping & Weather. I forgot a couple of things on my first quick pass, but after spending some time mulling it all over it all came to me. When my theory papers were "marked" by Steve from Valley Heights he said it was refreshing to see someone had spent the time to learn their stuff properly and that my assessment was the best of the day!! Cool! So I passed, which is a relief as I didn't spend as much time preparing as desired due to the arrival of you know who.

On Tuesday I attended an inter agency terrorist response exercise with about three hundred other members of the RFS from far and wide, including Heidi. It was a 4:30am pick up at Faulconbridge and then off to Holsworthy army base. I will not go into all the details, but people were made to look like they had been in an explosion on either a bus or a train. Both a train carriage and a bus were blown up for the exercise. Pig carcasses were placed in each and when I asked about this apparently they are put in there to gauge the effects of the blast on a body. It looked quite strange to see a pig carcass dangling over the back of a seat in an exploded bus! There was a lot of time spent sitting around waiting but the actual exercise itself and the makeup efforts were very impressive. I took a couple of sneaky photos of one of the "blast injuries" of a guy that played one of the dead.

Well that's all for know. I will update again soon...