Fighting fires with Hino Victoria's Country Fire Authority has battled more than its share of wildfires over the last 60 years. Since 1984, Hino has played a vital role in developing the ultimate fire-fighting machines with one of the world’s largest volunteer fire services. The 16th of February, 1983 will go down in Australia’s history as one its darkest days. The exact date may not be familiar, but the devastation wrought on that Ash Wednesday will forever be burnt into the consciousness of those Australians old enough to remember one of the nation’s worst disasters. The Ash Wednesday fires that swept through hundreds and thousands of hectares in Victoria and South Australia claimed 75 lives (47 in Victoria and 28 in South Australia) and destroyed more than 2000 houses, mainly in Victoria. The largest loss of life was just 60km south-east of Melbourne at Upper 16 | Torque
Beaconsfield, where 20 perished. Around 180 wild fires broke out on Ash Wednesday across 359,000 hectares in South Australia and Victoria. According to the CFA (Victoria’s Country Fire Authority), most of the fires were controlled on the day within two to eight hours. Others took a couple of days. If not for the incredible courage of the firefighting and emergency services involved, the carnage of Ash Wednesday could have been significantly worse. Established in 1945 after serious fires swept across Victoria several years earlier, the CFA has evolved to become one of the world’s largest
volunteer-based emergency services. Currently, 1209 CFA brigades operate across Victoria. They use 1600 vehicles and are staffed by 58,000 volunteer members, 601 career firefighters and operational staff plus more than 1200 support and administrative employees. The CFA is partly funded by the Victorian Government but mostly funded by the insurance industry. Hino’s involvement with the CFA began in 1984, just over a year after Ash Wednesday. In fact, a Hino FF172 that went into service on July 1, 1984 is still operating in the CFA fleet at Maroona in central Victoria.
For some time after the inception of the CFA fleet, the majority of its vehicles were petrol-engined vehicles. However, the petrol-engine vehicles of the day were prone to vapour lock, a scenario where the liquid fuel would turn into gas due to heat build-up, cutting the fuel flow to the carburettors. As a result, the CFA designed and fitted anti-fuel vaporisation kits to its fleet of petrolpowered appliances. Diesel fuel, by contrast, is largely vapour-resistant, but on a dollarper-horsepower basis, petrol-engined trucks back in the 1970s were the better option.