Firstcare Wildfire Support

Another succesfull fuel reduction burn executed for a landowner in Wilderness Heights. Huge thank you to the Langvlei Dunes FMU members that assisted. Little by little landowners are reducing the fire risk by irradicating invasive alien vegetation. Southern Cape Fire Protection Association

What a weekend. It was a motorsport weekend for our crews. Unit BR1 did fire & rescue duties as part of the Frontier Medix medical team at the Outeniqua 400 Rally Raid. This event concluded with the unfortunate incident of one of the multi million rand vehicles catching fire. Fortunately the driver and navigator escaped the inferno unharmed but the vehicle was destroyed.
Units FC1 & FC2 did fire safety at the George Oval Track for an afternoon and evening of racing. They also managed a serious incident where young Nikky Lotz (one of the youngest oval track racers in SA) collided very hard with the wall. Fortunately Nikky is ok but the same cannot be said for his car. And on the way back to base crews from both events came across a serious vehicle collision in Beach Rd, Pacaltsdorp. Safety and traffic control services were rendered untill handed over to traffic services.

Today we had the privilege to visit the awesome kids at Wiggles & Giggles Creche. We had awesome fun telling the kids about fire safety and then of course spraying some water. Note: No municipal water was used.

Sometimes nobody says thank you… because nobody knows they were there.

Not every fire department call makes the news.

Sometimes it's an automatic alarm at 2 a.m. Wires down in the rain. A tree across the road. A gas odor. Traffic control at a crash. Or one of the countless other calls most people never know happened.

But somebody still had to get out of bed.
Somebody still answered the tones, went to the station and responded, never knowing whether they were heading to something minor or someone's worst day.

And when it was over, they simply went home.

Maybe back to bed for a couple hours before work. Maybe back to a cold dinner or plans they had to leave behind.

There was no crowd waiting. No recognition. Most people never even knew they were there.

We notice our volunteer firefighters when something terrible happens. But they're serving their communities on all the ordinary calls, too.

So here's a thank you for those calls...the middle-of-the-night alarms, storm calls, traffic details, standbys and the calls that thankfully turned out to be nothing.

To every volunteer who quietly returned to the station, put the equipment away and went home:
We may not have known you were there. But we're grateful that you were. ❤️

A huge thank you go out to the Southern Cape Fire Protection Association for their generous donation of an awesome blower. Your continued support to FWS is greatly appreciated. This greatly improves our ability to deal with grass and veldfires, especially in areas where we do not have quick access to a water supply. We will set up a training session soon for our volunteers in the correct use and maintenance of the blower. This blower will form part of our George base assets. Once all volunteers are trained and competent on the operation of the blower we will then attempt to source another blower for our Wilderness Heights Satellite Base as well.

Some of our volunteers attended an accredited chainsaw course today. Just another way of ensuring that we render topnotch service to our clients and communities. After the theory session they did the practical part on our farm where 1 of the access roads to the back part of the farm still had to be cleared after the recent storm. All attendees did a superb job and have all been deemed competent to efficiently and safely operate a chainsaw. Huge thank you to Garden Route Training for sponsoring this course.

Early this morning we were contacted by a client with regards to a house alight on his property. Together with Sedgefield and George Fire Departments the fire was extinguished. Unfortunately the historic house (built in the 1800's) filled with antique furniture from the same era was entirely gutted.