Our staff
Zone Manager - Fire Control Officer - Superintendent Brett Bowden AFSM
Phone: 02 6363 6666
Previous Life: Worked in the Industrial Construction Industry across various locations in Australia & Offshore. He left a position in Newcastle / Hunter Valley as site electrical foreman to pursue a career as an FCO during 1995.
Rural Fire Service: Joined as a volunteer in 1978 in the Port Stephens district and held positions as Deputy Captain and Captain of two brigades in that District.
After spending six years managing a District with 45 brigades covering 6,500 sq kms, & now as an integral part of the zone with 83 brigades in nearly 12,000 sq kms, Brett has some experience in stretching the capabilities!
"I believe that the people are the key to an organisation like ours and my role is to see them equipped with the skills, resources and attitude to be able to carry out the roles that our communities expect."
Operations Officer. Brett's position principally involves the management and mitigation of our bush fire risk and the oversight of our Emergency Response Systems used to combat incidents.
Training: Whilst having been involved in all mainstream training courses since 1984 more recently Brett has targeted the Operational Management specific areas of our industry to better equip the team for managing multi team responses. The past three years has also seen the introduction of Aviation training into the Region and Brett has been involved in this through accreditation as an Aircraft Officer which allows the Zone to have a key air operations management at its IMT level.
District Coordinator - Operational Officer Adrian Grabham
Phone: 02 6363 6666
Zone Technical Officer - Geoff Selwood AFSM
Phone: 02 6363 6666
Previous Life: Geoff joined the Department of Social Security in 1973 and retired from there in 1999 to join the NSW Rural Fire Service.
Rural Fire Service: Geoff, like all children living on farms, was fighting fires as soon as he was old enough to. He became part of the on-call staff with the Cabonne and Orange Districts in 1990 and became Group Captain in 1995. Geoff devotes an enormous amount of time delivering training courses for Volunteers on weekends, repairs, services and navigates all radio and pager resourcing on top of leading the Area in hazard reduction management practices.
Training: Geoff is Group Leader qualified, a control room communications supervisor and has numerous years experience in GIS and mapping technology.
Operational Management - Jenifer Bucknell
Phone: 02 6363 6666
Administration Officer - Membership Services - Jasmyne Bootsma
Phone: 02 6363 6666
Learning and Development Officer - Operational Officer Katrina Smith
Phone: 02 6363 6666
Assets and Infrastructure Officer - Operational Officer Zac Hojel
Phone: 02 6363 6666
Assets and Infrastructure Officer - Operational Officer - Darrell Wicks
Phone: 02 6363 6666
