Victoria’s fire services have yesterday released the latest quarterly response times, revealing a continued strong performance as they worked together to keep the community safe during an incredibly challenging quarter.

Acting Minister for Police and Emergency Services Danny Pearson acknowledged the hard work of career and volunteer firefighters across the state during exceptional circumstances, many of whom played a critical role in consecutive crises with the bushfires of 2019-20 followed quickly by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

The start of the quarter saw the introduction of significant fire services reforms and the establishment of Fire Rescue Victoria, which replaced the former Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB). Since the last round of response times reporting, 38 Country Fire Authority (CFA) stations have transferred to Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV).

Figures for July to September 2020 show that FRV responded to 10,860 emergency and non-emergency incidents including:

• 90.7 per cent of code one incidents (all emergency call outs) within service delivery standards overall
• 92.9 per cent of structure fires within 7.7 minutes, above the FRV and government target of 90 per cent
• 94.6 per cent of Emergency Medical Response incidents within 9.2 minutes, above the target of 90 per cent.

Overall, CFA’s state-wide compliance with the Community Service Delivery Standard currently sits at 83 per cent from a 90 per cent target, having responded to 2,143 emergency incidents during the July to September period.

This rate is a measure of the first fire truck arriving on scene, regardless of brigade area, and is relevant across all hazard classes.

The September quarter figures show response times continue to vary depending on the type of environment, with fire services responding to:

• 82.3 per cent of fires in medium-density areas within the standard response time of 8 minutes
• 79.1 per cent of fires in low-density urban areas within the standard response time of 10 minutes
• No brigade areas had 10 or more emergency incidents in a rural area (standard response time of 20 minutes) during the quarter; therefore, there is no data to report for the Hazard Class 4 category. 

The FRV data can be viewed at frv.vic.gov.au/response-times and the CFA data can be viewed at cfa.vic.gov.au/about/emergency-response-times.