South Australian Country Fire Service Promotions Unit

Promoting and Archiving the Historical foundations of the Service

 
History Section News
Return to News Archive

Royal Show - September 1995
Submitted On Thursday, May 16, 2024
Submitted By Pip

The 1995 Royal Adelaide Show saw the re-building of the display inside the unit to feature more computers, over 120 new photographs and videos.

It also introduced the ERGUIDE.

The ERGUIDE was launched as the first comprehensive on-line guide to the CFS and held information on all brigades around the state. For the first time, information on how to join every brigade state wide was compiled. The centre piece of the ERGUIDE is a massive map of South Australia with some 500 lights representing every fire station in the State. By pressing a button on the map, the lights turn on for the appropriate station (for example the Hazmat button, lights up all of the fire stations which can respond to Hazardous Materials Incidents).

The map, built by another CFS Volunteer, Simon (as a part of his University Studies), took six months to design and build. Installation of the ERGUIDE map required six people, 2.5 hours and the closing of a suburban street. It stands 2.5m tall, contains approximately 3.5 Km of wire, weighs 200Kg and features 1:25000 scale topographic maps.

The original ERGUIDE computer program was designed by Gavin, a friend of Nick & Simon, as a part of his University degree. Coded in Visual Basic, the ERGUIDE matched potential new recruits to brigades by their post code. Over 250 pages of code were generated for the ERGUIDE.

The Royal Show site was a much larger site than the previous year, with Brigades were invited each day to crew the show stand and provide an appliance for that day.

Over 100 different members attended, from over 30 brigades.

Around 10,000 people came though the unit, and around 60,000 stopped to watch the almost 50 live action displays - including BA and flammable fuel fires.

Smoky the koala was also out and about (and having a wow of a time!)

Return to Top of Page