To all members:

The brigade will be conducting a hazard reduction burn on Saturday the 1st of August, 2009. Burning will commence late in the morning and should be completed before 17:00.

Members interested in participating should contact Keith or Nick.

The brigade extends warm congratulations to Trevor and Sheree on the birth of their new son Kane Levi, born on Friday the 24th of July.

Both mum and the new bub are doing well, although the state of dad is unknown.

This month the brigade received its new computer, funded by the ESL. The machine is a HP Compaq dc7900, running Windows XP and includes a 19" HP LCD screen and a HP CP1515n colour laser printer. The brigade would like to thank the Mundaring Shire for organising these machines for all brigades in the shire.

Along with the ADSL Internet connection, the computer will be used for office administration, records keeping, GIS/mapping and incident management.

Sawyers Valley VBFB is at the forefront of providing Internet services to bush fire brigades, through the bfb.asn.au website. Additionally, the brigade is  researching systems and processes for easily and securely providing Internet and other ITS services to guest agencies during an incident. Anyone interested in finding out more about this research can contact Adrian Woodley at the brigade.

Here is a link to a two part story about Matcham Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade (NSW RFS):

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1438935/bushfire_brigade_tribute_part_1/

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1438972/bushfire_brigade_tribute_part2/