Under-resourced firefighters could be forced to borrow an unregistered truck from the CSIRO's Tidbinbilla site 45 minutes away if multiple multistorey fires broke out across Canberra, the United Firefighters Union ACT has revealed.
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Thursday's mattress fire at an industrial recycling centre in Fyshwick exposed ACT Fire and Rescue's need to invest in another Bronto or aerial firefighting appliance, United Firefighters Union ACT secretary Greg McConville said.
He said while all of Canberra's specialist appliances were tied up at the Lithgow Street fire, a sole truck from Kambah was the only unit available to respond to reports of a hotel fire in Phillip.
"What you would typically do at an alarm call at a multistorey building is you'd turn out two pumpers and an aerial appliance. That's what you require for safe firefighting. What turned out yesterday was one pumper and they had no back-up available because Canberra's firefighting resources were so stretched by the incident at Fyshwick," Mr McConville said.
ACT Fire and Rescue only has one Bronto truck that is able to fight fires in buildings higher than seven stories.
Under a deed of agreement with the CSIRO, the ACT Emergency Services Agency can borrow a Bronto truck from its Deep Space Communication Centre at Tidbinbilla.
But Mr McConville slammed the arrangement as inadequate and impractical, given the truck was unregistered and would require a special permit each time it was deployed.
"The equipment is an hour-and-a-half away, is not registered to drive on the roads, is incapable of delivering water to a fire, is incapable of creating a water curtain for the safety of firefighters above a fire, is incompatible with rescue, doesn't have air lines for breathing apparatus, doesn't have an emergency descent mechanism in the event that the hydraulics fail, it doesn't have an escape ladder.
"The list just goes on in which the features for this particular Bronto are not suitable in emergencies," Mr McConville said.
"In actual fact it would be quicker to go to ActewAGL and get one of their cherrypickers. You can commandeer that under the Emergency Services Act if you really need it, and it wouldn't cost you anything."
To invest in additional specialised firefighting appliances would cost up to $2.3 million, a price that should be covered under Canberrans' increasing fire levy, Mr McConville said.
"Given the fire levy will increase from $40 million to over $80 million by 2018/19 you would think the money the people of Canberra are paying for emergency services should be able to pay for appliance of that kind.," he said.
But ACT Emergency Services Commissioner Dominic Lane maintained a second Bronto was not needed due to the declining number of urban fires.
He said the agency was working with the transport authorities to iron out any problems driving the CSIRO Bronto on Canberra roads.
"The only thing that's stopping us from utilising it at the moment is the United Firefighters Union. We hope to sit down and work with the United Firefighters Union so we can access that equipment and use it if needed," Mr Lane said.
The commissioner disputed that firefighting resources had been stretched on Thursday.
"We have more resources than ever before, more firefighters, newer fire stations and more ambulance stations which all help keep the community safe. We certainly weren't under pressure yesterday and I'm not concerned about that particular incident in any way, shape or form," Mr Lane said.
"In fact there were two appliances that were available [for the fire at Phillip] and two responded but it was only a small incident, it was a false alarm, the truck that got there was able to confirm that nothing else was required. If something else had have happened, we would have used the technology around us to make the right decisions and we could have called in a lot more resources."
