Fire and Rescue 389 welcomed Zone Commander Thomas Freedom to the station recently to give out a number of awards to members of our local brigade.
One such award went to Local Legend Nic Nadycz who received a framed certificate from Mr Freedom alongside other vital members of the team.
They included: Wal Leonow (Bushfire Medal) Doug Baker (Bushfire Medal) Matt Prosser (10 years of service and Good Conduct), Thomas Boehm ( Bushfire Medal ) Jayson Smith (Bushfire Medal) Mr Freedom said, “I have only just met you but it feels like I’ve known you for a long time, we have had such a good yack. It is an absolute pleasure to present you with this.
Thank you on behalf of the Commissioner for your 40 years of service.”
Nic said, “A couple of people beat me. I was nearly going to retire at 35 years but got conned in to staying on. There is a time when you go and you sort of know that. It’s been a long journey and things have changed. When I first joined we had a set of bells that rang. You had to run to the station and receive the call. When I first joined everyone had to live within a kilometre of the station. If I got here I would open the door and turn on the lights. Back then you had to get a bit of a taste for it and the current members a taste for you in case you didn’t like it.”
“You were selected. The boys would have a meeting and they might say is there anyone who doesn’t like, say, a Nic Nadycz or does he owe you money type of thing. If someone said they didn’t like you, you wouldn’t be able to join.” He joked.
Nick went to Alexandria in Sydney to see how permanent firefighters trained and continued to grow his skillset over time as well as out at Deniliquin.
“Back then we had 3 people who could answer the phone. The phone had different tones so you new if it was a fire call and you would pick up and listen. Since then computers have come in. Talking about fires, the Transgrid fire at Demondrille was the biggest incident and fatalities which are not very nice and they come up from time to time.”
Wal Leonow has been with the brigade for over 20 years.
He said, “He is just a really good team player, always there, part of the team and attended many incidents. What he has done for the community, he is involved in practically everything we are all proud of him, he is a great bloke.”
Wal added that as members leave the brigade needs to recruit and that anyone interested should contact him.
“There’s positions available if anyone is interested in joining.”
Fire fighters attend many local fire incidents as well as local and highway incidents.
They also support the RFS and some are dual members who have to go away while they are meant to be looking after their own stock or heading into a harvest.
They sacrifice a lot. The Times spoke with Mr Freedom after the presentation.
He said, “When they go away, and they leave their families they have to deal with impacts of trauma dealing with everything that comes with natural disasters, whether it’s flood or fire. It can be quite a confusing and challenging time because they’re used to serving their own community and surrounding areas.
But when they travel away, they’re serving others. And the capacity doesn’t change, but the landscape changes.
So there’s that, they’re away from their families, they’re away from their primary employment. Often they’ll attend rescue incidents, motor vehicles, as you say, accidents.
And sometimes they’re people that they know, that’s tough and that’s challenging and there’s no easy answers.
Honest, Fire and Rescue provides cutting edge support services with our employment assistance programme.
But I think that a lot of their resilience comes from being part of that community team and I think that helps them through. It goes with the territory.”
With our local community smack bang in the middle of winter Mr Freedom said, “We’re asking people to take care through the winter months, of course, and what we’d like for people to do, the message we’d like them to take home is to be safe, not sorry. So be safe, not sorry, be prepared for the winter months, particularly around appliances and heating implements, sleeping, electric blankets and the like, watch your kids around anything like that and always keep looking when you’re cooking in the kitchen.
I suppose the other thing I’d mentioned is that with the wet conditions lately, you know, the roads can be hazardous and we’d like people to slow down and just take that extra few minutes to get to their destination.”
Mr Freedom said he has also been dealing with the recent floods in the Sydney area.
“So, myself, I’ve just spent three days working in an SES incident Control Centre, I can assist them through managing incidents, or personnel on the ground. They have been very busy on the East Coast and following the storm front up into the mid-north.
We’ve deployed our Swiftwater rescue teams so Fire Rescue has an in water capability where we assist the SES.
It was only a few nights ago in southern Sydney that SES and fire rescue crews were engaged in something like 50 in water rescues in an hour period of intense conditions.
I think we’re well equipped and I think we’re well placed particularly when it comes to supporting other agencies and in 2022 emergency response agencies do that better than we’ve ever done before.”
Next week our photo gallery from the night.
