The TFS, Tasmania Police, the EPA, and the City of Launceston have formed a working group to reduce the number of preventable fires around Launceston. Video by Aaron Smith (9/12/24)
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00:00We've formed a stronger partnership with TFS at that strategic level to ensure that our response
00:06is best positioned and best suited to protecting our community. I absolutely see this group in
00:13particular having an impact in terms of our ability to share intelligence and our ability
00:18to look at our areas and our recidivist offenders with a view to proactively targeting those people
00:25to ensure that we can again keep our community as safe as we possibly can.
00:30History shows us that we have had repeated behaviours time and time again and what people
00:35need to realise is anybody who is misusing fire in the landscape, so if you deliberately
00:41light fires with the intention of causing harm then that puts risk to the community,
00:46to the responders and even to the individual who may inadvertently put themselves in harm's way
00:52when they are undertaking these sort of actions. Every single time we have to send crews out to
00:56deal with those deliberate fires takes our attention away from something else, so as an
01:02example if there was a car accident or if there was somebody in distress that needed support from
01:08the Tasmanian Fire Service it could result in a delay for us getting crews to help them.
01:13We work so incredibly hard about being so proud of what we have here in Launceston in Tasmania,
01:18we don't want these sort of detractors to be coming in and creeping into people's conversations,
01:22we want them to be talking about the amazing things that we see from a local point of view,
01:26the things that we love and engage with and being that at the forefront of people's
01:29mind when they are talking about Tasmania and Launceston as a whole.