A Canberra firefighter has pushed to give young boys another reason to look up to his profession.
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After discovering his daughter was a victim of domestic violence, Fire and Rescue ACT station officer Mick Burns used his platform as a role model to help spread an important message.
He is the reason the agency's new $800,000 fire pumper is themed around violence prevention organisation White Ribbon Australia.
"About 18 months ago while undertaking white ribbon annual training, the penny started to drop for me that my daughter was actually under some domestic violence issues herself," Mr Burns said.
"As a family we decided to get to the bottom of it, and we are still going through that.
"What we wanted to do, because firefighters are role models in society is spread the big key message that domestic violence whether emotional or physical is not okay."
He hoped domestic violence victims would see the messaging while the truck was parked beside a street or driving on the road and be encouraged to speak out.
As well as spreading anti-violence awareness, the new pumper is far more powerful and more sophisticated than the one it replaced, ACT police minister Mick Gentleman said.
"The cockpit has a lot of fly-by wire technology, the controls for the gear box are fly-by wire, the pedals are fly-by wire and it does give the opportunity for the controllers to use the latest technology," Mr Gentleman said.
Four of ACT Fire and Rescue's pumpers are equipped with this technology and the remaining five will follow suit in coming years in line with the vehicle replacement program.
Mr Gentleman said the older trucks are kept as backups to be used during servicing and repairs of the new ones.
United Firefighters' Union ACT branch secretary Greg McConville said the newer trucks also had safer and more stable engine controls.
"Because Canberra has lots of roundabouts, it has issues with putting trucks with several tonnes onto the roundabout," he said.
"The stability control would kick in and rev limiter will go on and it could actually impede the firefighters' ability to get to the fire quickly enough."
"This truck incorporates the engine control module rewrite to prevent this from happening."
