Members of NSWAFI, many thanks for your continued support into the New Year. Here is an update on the Association and preliminary notice of events planned for the future.
Education Nights
Our first Education Night will be on Thursday, 5 February at Ryde-Eastwood Leagues club. This will be a presentation by Station Officer Morgan Cook in relation to the investigation and the research project around the Quakers Hill nursing home fire in 2011. Morgan will also discuss the future of Research within FRNSW and the development of the FIRU Research facility at Londonderry. This will be a very interesting and informative presentation; I would encourage you to attend.
Our second Education Night is planned for Thursday, 2 April, the night before Good Friday. This presentation will be about Fire Investigation Qualifications within Australia and how they relate to you. I will conduct the presentation but I will be asking people from different training organisations to talk about what they can offer from their organisation. So if you have no qualifications, or even if you have a few, this presentation will give you a good understanding of what is out there.
Our third Education Night is planned for Thursday, 4 June, and will be a presentation on Negative Corpus. If you don’t know what this is then this presentation will certainly enlighten you regarding the process of elimination during an investigation. Jim Munday will present, but we plan to have a panel discussion on the topic so this will be a presentation that will invite audience participation.
The last three Education Nights of the year will be on 6 August, 1 October and 3 December. We have not planned the topics as yet, but we have slotted in one of those to be a night of case studies. This will most likely be on 6 August and the plan is to have three case studies from different presenters, about 20-30 minutes each. If you would like to present a case study for this Education Night, please email the President and your case study will be assessed by the Committee.
Membership Fees
Fees are now due. One year membership is $50, two years is $90, and three years is $120. You can pay by credit card (excluding AMEX), cheque or EFT. Make your payment out to:
Fire Brigade Employees Credit Union
BSB: 802825
Account name: NSW Association of Fire Investigators Inc
Account number: 114123
Please add your full name to the comments section if you are paying by EFT so we know who has paid. If you would like to pay by credit card and don’t want to write it down, contact our Treasurer.
Recruitment Drive
The committee is always looking to increase our membership and so we would like all of our current members to encourage others who they live or work with in or around the Fire Investigation industry to join. Our association survives on membership fees as its primary form of income.
IAAI Update
The IAAI (of which we are a chapter) continues to grow as an international organisation. Membership has grown 22% in the past three years with 496 new members in 2014 alone. There are now 8,291 members worldwide. If you would like to join, visit the IAAI website.
Their certification programs are also growing, with the Fire Investigation Technician (IAAI-FIT) growing to over 1,000 since its launch four years ago. There are now 2,096 Certified Fire Investigators (IAAI-CFI), which was started in 1986. More information on these programs will be provided in the April education night.
Website
Our website will be updated in February and we will have a new members area, where videos of Education Nights will be posted so those that cannot make it on the night of the presentation can view them.
We hope to see some of you at the Education Night in February!