Anyone who has been a victim of car theft knows about the up front costs of the awful crime, but what many never see are the less obvious “costs”.
While neither the State Government, insurance company or vehicle owner have to pay a cent for this unfortunate flow-on from many car thefts, the incredible women and men of WA’s invaluable Volunteer Bush Fire Service often do – by way of donating their time and expertise to managing the fires that thieves start to try to destroy evidence of their grubby activities.
Of course, our amazing 26,000 volunteers very rarely talk about it and certainly don’t complain because attending these incidents is just a part of the unpaid “job” they agree to do as a member of WA’s 560+ brigades.
We came across the Facebook post below from the incredible team at Wanneroo Central Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade recently that gives a short video overview of a tiny part of what turned out to be a complex multi-day incident that had a fireground of 42 hectares. As the post says, some of the Wanneroo volunteers spent 35+ hours each fighting the fire over the whole of the Australia Day long weekend.
The ladies and gents at Wanneroo are too humble to use words like “cost” because like so many of our volunteers, they value the safety of their community much more than they value their time and expertise. However, it is squarely the job of the AVBFB to not only draw attention to the enormous expert effort of these amazing human beings, but also use the word “cost” when we talk about the value of the service of our volunteers – just imagine if insurance companies had to cover the cost of a fire started by a car theft and every hour of every volunteer was on the invoice!
Thank you to the team at Wanneroo who gave up their long weekend while the rest of us watched the tennis and had picnics with our families. And congratulations for the humble post that gives the public (and politicians) just a little more insight to the true value of you and the 26,000 others like you who proudly don the gold uniform and leave their homes and families to protect those of others.
