For 50 years Bruce Leonard of Lauriston has been serving his community through the Lauriston Fire Brigade.
It’s earned him a double Gold Star recognition.
‘‘It’s surprising where those 50 years have gone,” he said.
‘‘I can still remember the first fire I attended.
Many of the fires I have attended are still fresh in my mind.
‘‘It’s surreal to think it’s been 50 years. I don’t have a record of how many fires I have attend. It was something I just go and do,” Leonard said.
He said technology had “galloped ahead” in the past five decades.
‘‘We can now dispatch one of our trucks crewed by just two people a driver and an operator.”
It’s a far cry from when his late father John Leonard started the brigade in 1972.
In those days it was bags, buckets and shovels for 13-year-old Bruce and other members of the brigade.
Before the formation of the brigade, if a fire occurred it was all hands on deck from the people in the community.
They had to deal with it with using whatever resources they had until a neighbouring brigade reached them.
In the days before cell phones and pagers if there was fire a call would go through to Leonard’s mechanical and engineering business, then John and Bruce would get out the truck while Bruce’s mum, the late Noeline Leonard, would ring around the other members of the brigade to let them know there was fire.
‘‘As many of the firemen worked on farms, mum would ring the wife, she would have to go out around the farm and find her husband and tell him there was fire.”
The brigade has had several fire engines over the years and now has a single cab truck that carries three people and a double cab capable of carrying six.
‘‘When I started there wasn’t all the PPE, which is a big thing now.”
There was also a change to how the brigade cleaned up after a fire callout.
In the past, once it was put out the fire, it was return to the station, clean the canvas hoses hang them on the fence to dry, and then head back to work in the clothes they had fought the fire in.
There was none of that now. The equipment has advanced, as have the services fireys respond to; from fighting fires to attending motor vehicle accidents.
