On the way home tonight from buying a new battery for my laptop from the Apple store in Woolongong I got caught in a traffic jam. It was at the end of Agar's Lane - about 2 or 3 k's from my house. I found out that the local pre-school teacher had come too fast into a corner where the council are doing some road work, and lost control of the car. The car skidded, hit an embankment and rolled. Fortunately the driver was ok.

The local fire brigade was at the scene doing traffic control while a tow truck manoeuvred to get the car right side up in order to tow it.

I got all this from one of the fire men as I was waiting.

We started to chat.

He told me that unknown to most of the people in NSW -  the state government changed the regulations a couple of years ago and that now the NSW Fire Brigade is not allowed to attend motor accidents that are outside of towns. They have deemed that the Bush Fire Brigade is to attend accidents on the highway outside of Berry, for instance, rather than the NSW Fire Brigade.

What this means is that if a car has an accident on the highway at say, Foxground, about 10k's outside Berry, it falls under the jurisdiction of the Bushies.

The problem is that the Bush Fire Brigade typically takes longer to get to the scene of a fire than the NSW Brigade because they have different performance criteria. They also have different equipment, and often have to call the NSW guys in after they have arrived. Bottom line is that the NSW guys have more equipment. And they also get paid. Clearly the NSW Government is penny pinching on costs and it is putting you and I at risk.

They are both volunteer organizations, but in the case of the NSW Fire Brigade, the guys get paid an hourly rate for their community service rather than being total volunteers.

A couple of years ago when there was an accident on the highway outside of Berry and the driver was incinerated. He died. There was a truck driver who called in the accident to the emergency phone line. The local NSW guys were ready to go within 8 minutes but couldn't attend. The Bush fire guys took over 20 minutes to get to the accident.

This is not to in any way put down the Bush Fire Brigade. They do a marvellous job. But according to the guy I was talking to the point is that all the NSW guys have to live within one k of the Fire Station, and the Bush guys don't. And they have the specialist equipment that is required for some of the more critical accidents.

This seems to be another case of the Iemma government trying to scrimp on costs and putting the public at risk.