TOORA CFA Captain Mark Hurst said motorists needed to be applauded for observing new laws during a gas leak at a Toora service station on Thursday, May 10 from about 6pm.
“I’m not sure if people were slowing down to have a bit of a sticky beak. It wasn’t very well publicized, but from July 1 this year the rules totally changed with regards to how fast you go can go when you see an emergency vehicle with its lights flashing,” he said.
“It’s now 40kmh and if you go past a cop who’s pulled someone over and you’re doing 100kmh, you can lose you licence.”
The same applies to CFA members attending a call out.
Under the rules motorists must slow down to a speed that would enable them to stop safely when approaching and passing enforcement, emergency or escort vehicles that are stationary or moving slowly and have either:
- Red and blue flashing lights
- Magenta (purple flashing lights)
- An alarm sounding.
You must not exceed 40km/h when passing the vehicle and not increase your speed until a safe distance from the scene.
Mr Hurst said the gas leak at the station was well handled by staff, who isolated it. “In the end someone came from Sale and shut everything down. There was the smell of gas kicking around. It was quite dangerous to begin with, but the danger decreased over time,” he said.
The site was declared safe after about 90 minutes.
Two appliances from Foster and one from Toora attended the incident.
In a separate incident, late on Tuesday, May 8, local brigades were called to a suspected tree fire on the corner of Meeniyan Promontory Road and Waratah Road, Fish Creek.
According to Fish Creek CFA Captain John Poletti the report turned out to be a “false alarm stop” (non-event). “This is what sometimes happens. You drive around looking for something. On this occasion we never found anything,” he said. The false alarm stop drew four appliances – two from Fish Creek, one from Sandy Point and one from Foster.
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