Seventy-one-year-old Hazelwood North Fire Brigade volunteer Ray Beaton believes there is always a role for everyone in the CFA.
The former brigade captain’s determination to continue to serve his community for more than 35 years has earned him a Seniors Award at the recent Spirit of the CFA Awards.
“I’m quite capable of dragging a hose or whatever at the moment. I’m fit enough to do that, that’s fine, I’ll keep doing it, but you can always wind back and do something less,” Mr Beaton, the brigade chairperson, said.
Mr Beaton’s recent focus has been training 10 retired brigade members in an initiative for deploying two portable automatic weather stations around the state when necessary in fire season.
The initiative has allowed older members of the entirely volunteer-based brigade to remain active.
During his captaincy he responded to the 2009 fires which devastated not only the Latrobe Valley but much of the state.
“A lot of members put in a lot of time … it wasn’t just the day, it’s the aftermath that takes all the time – the drives, the donations, the fencing of properties,” Mr Beaton said.
The Hazelwood North brigade had to deal with its own internal recovery following a truck burn-over incident where its own volunteers couldn’t escape the fire.
Mr Beaton had to look after the welfare of his members remotely.
“I had a radio and knew what was going on and I had a very young, young man from Glengarry that was actually beside me in the vehicle taking notes operating the radio and stuff like that and he did an excellent job,” Mr Beaton said.
He said after an incident like that, it was his role to nurture the volunteers to not lose them from the organisation.
“Don’t expect them to jump on the truck the next day and that type of thing, ease them back into the fury if you like,” he said.
In his decades of service Mr Beaton has seen the volunteers construct a comfortable room at Hazelwood North which was previously “only a shed”.
“We desperately needed somewhere to meet with the guys, hold small, small functions and be able to cater after a fire so that you can bring the troops back here and give them a feed and look after them,” Mr Beaton said.
Mr Beaton is the strike team coordinator and sits on the committee for the Merton Group.
He said he was “pretty chuffed” to receive the award out of four finalists.
“It’s a bit unexpected.”
