As part of the lead up to the 2010/11 fire season SFM organized a training day for our harvesting contractors. Two courses were run on 22/10/10 by Barry Burns of Future Forest Services. The training was carried out in the Forestry Tasmania training rooms in Melville St. 11 members of SFM’s contractor workforce required new or refresher courses in fire weather evaluation and/or bush fire awareness.

The fire weather evaluation course provides technical training in measuring and recording accurate readings of temperature, wind speed and relative humidity in order to determine the localized Fire Danger Rating (FDR). Once the FDR is established for the site the contractor can determine if they are able to continue working or shut the operation down until cooler conditions prevail.

The Bush fire awareness course gives basic training in operating and maintaining pumps and other fire suppression equipment, fire prevention procedures and general safety in a fire.