Tuesday, May 20, 2025:
6:07am: About to leave Ararat. Three-carriage V/Line is full of CFA volunteers. (Steve King, via Facebook).
Sunday, May 18, 2025:
1:28pm: Acheron CFA held a Brigade meeting this morning and voted to attend the protest rally in Melbourne on Tuesday. You can read Captain Adam Kamenek’s statement here.
Saturday, May 17, 2025:
8:30am: Details for Tuesday’s planned protest at Parliament House have been altered and a pre-protest “democracy sausage” BBQ has been added, to be held on the steps of Parliament House, Spring Street, Melbourne at 9.45am Tuesday, May 20.
Friday, May 16, 2025:
9:35pm: It is very unusual for a union to join with Liberals in condemning Premier Jacinta Allan.
9:10pm: Next Tuesday, the Allan Labor government will deliver the State Budget. Kevin Butler, founder of BlazeAid, along with others, plan to protest on the steps of Parliament House, Spring Street, Melbourne at 10am on Tuesday.
8:10pm: Over 300 CFA brigades, equating to over 1000 fire trucks are now ‘offline’, and have called (via radio) the CFA Control Centre and gone ‘out of service’.
6:42pm: Elmhurst CFA Lieutenant Myles Keith recorded footage yesterday afternoon of tanker after tanker calling into emergency dispatch and taking themselves offline.
Lieutenant Keith told Ben Silvester, reporting for The Standard that “24 hours later his radio still has tankers calling in to go offline.
“There would be easily 1000 appliances [fire trucks] offline across the state by now. Easily,” Lieutenant Keith told The Standard.
7:30am: The Victorian government’s Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund (ESVF) – also known as the Emergency Services and Volunteers Levy – has passed the upper house of parliament during a late-night sitting of parliament, with the support of the Greens and members of the crossbench.
The mayor of Strathbogie, Claire Ewart-Kennedy, told 3AW Breakfast the levy is a “double tax” on those who pay out of their own pocket and help to fight fires.
“We wouldn’t have our farms if it wasn’t for the CFA. This is going to kill our communities,” she said.
7:25am: “The CFA is aware that a number of brigades are currently offline this evening due to a lack of crewing.
“This can happen for a variety of reasons, and this can change rapidly, with brigades going back online as well.
“We are continuing to monitor the situation to ensure brigades are notified of emergencies in their communities and additional brigades are responded.
“Under the operational systems in place, when any brigade is offline, neighbouring brigades are notified and can respond, ensuring our communities are protected.
“We expect that our brigades will turn out to protect their communities as they always have done in their time of need,” CFA Acting Chief Officer Garry Cook said.
Thursday, May 15, 2025:
Earlier tonight, in response to Premier Jacinta Allan’s Emergency Services tax, over 200 volunteer CFA brigades have ‘clocked off’ their volunteer services, with many volunteer brigades ‘going offline’ and are now unavailable.
Brigades now going off line since around 3.30pm this afternoon include most of Western Victoria, with the Pyrenees Group ‘clocking off’ around an hour ago, Ballarat region & Mallee are ‘clocking out’ now.
A CFA firefighter can be heard in audio supplied exclusively to VicNews, passing on a message to CFA dispatch, “Would you like to pass on a personal message to the government?”
“… tanker, go ahead,” the dispatcher responds.
“Tell Ms Allan to come out here and we’ll tell her to get fucked.”
“Roger. I’ll see what I can do,” the dispatcher responds via CFA radio.
The Grampians area ‘clocked off’ earlier, whilst South West Victoria ‘clocked off’ about half an hour ago.
Some towns are keeping one tanker online in case of building fires, “but we [CFA volunteers] are deadly serious about this. Their latest levy in drought-declared areas is just so disingenuous in a state that now refuses to declare drought,” a CFA volunteer told VicNews.
“… almost every tanker crew in our region has clocked off now in protest,” a (confirmed) CFA volunteer who requested anonymity told VicNews.
“The idea is to force their hand – resources will be wasted as the MFB [FRV] will have to cover the fringe areas of Melbourne,” another volunteer told VicNews.
“As captain, I have a CFA radio in my Ute and have heard all these tankers going off line and are [sic] think we might pull ours out as well,” CFA Captain Jason Mellings told VicNews.
This response from CFA volunteers follows protest actions last Friday, May 9, culminating in arriving along Spring Street in convoy.
When contacted by VicNews via email and phone, the CFA Media call-taker, Craig, said that: “We’re not answering media enquiries until 9 o’clock tomorrow.”
This is a developing story. If you have information, please contact us.
The Premier’s office has been contacted for comment.
Last Updated: 5:45pm, Sunday, May 18, 2025.
First Published: 10:20pm, Thursday, May 15, 2025.
