Harvey’s emergency services personnel have been given a much-needed boost in time for Summer.
The new Harvey Emergency Services Centre will be officially opened on Saturday, October 14 at 12pm.
Minister for Emergency Services Fran Logan MLA will be on deck to officially open the Harper Street premises.
Shire of Harvey executive manager corporate services Shane Collie was pleased the new facility was available.
He said the centre was set up to properly assist the region’s fire and emergency services crews.
“Being a co-located facility, it’s now a facility where it can quite easily be an incident control centre for whether that’s SES or the Harvey Hills Bushfire Brigade,” he said.
“If we another major incident such as Yarloop – hopefully we won’t – this area is set up for each of the agencies but also as a main training and operation centre, it’s really a state-of-the-art building.”
Mr Collie said funding from the Department of Fire and Emergency Services and the WA Government helped to deliver the facility.
He said it would provide support to areas around Harvey such as Brunswick and Collie in the event of an emergency.
He also noted it was set up to avoid incidents such the 2016 Yarloop/Waroona bushfires.
“We had the Myalup Brigade, in January and February 2016 they had 58 out of 60 operational days because of the fire situations that were occurring,” he said.
“To think these were volunteers giving up their own time, it’s just absolutely critical the community is resourced and able to respond to emergencies.”
