The five day Incident Management Exercise (IMX) also doubled as a test run for the new state-of-the-art facility.

After a decade of planning it was officially opened in August 2015 and has yet to see a section 44.

A term used to describe when the RFS Commissioner declares a localised ‘State of Emergency’ for a specific district suffering severe fire conditions that cannot be managed without drawing in extensive resources from other areas.

So holding region east’s regular IMX at the facility should allow for any fine-tuning to occur before such an event. 

The exercise involved RFS staff from around the region being put through simulated fires and other incidents to maintain their skills, and gain valuable qualifications.

Members of our local communications team were on hand feeding vital information to teams working in  the impressive new operations room.

Superintendent  Mathew Smith, region east operational service officer, says they bought the date forward for this regular IMX to test the new facility.

“Out of this process we will identify anything that can be improved,” he explains.

“So come October 1 anything identified would have been addressed before the fire season, and we will be good to go.”

Opportunities like this are vital as the only other time these conditions are experienced is during an actual fire, he says.