CFA has welcomed an additional boost of 1,500 new recruits into brigades across the state since January, further enhancing their capacity to respond to emergencies this fire season.
Kicking off in March, CFA's annual Give us a Hand recruitment campaign gave brigades the opportunity to call out to local residents or to re-engage with those who have been considering joining in the past to express their interest in making a difference to their community.
Following a challenging and devasting fire season, CFA thanks the encouraging number of Victorians who have put themselves forward to play a role in protecting their communities.
Of the new recruits, 983 are between the ages of 18 and 34, 483 are women and 1,222 will become operational firefighters. Nearly 300 members have also put their hand up to assist brigades in highly valued support roles.
While the North East of the state saw 494 new volunteers over the age of 18, over in the North West, a further 364 were greeted into brigades, including an influx of 14 at Rockbank Fire Brigade.
Rockbank Fire Brigade Captain Luke Hibbins-Lecce said while the post fire season surge was felt in their applications, a series of brigade-led activities helped drive awareness to assist the result of 53 expressions of interest between 1 January and 15 July 2026.
"Out of the 53 people who expressed interest, we're really pleased to see 16 now committed to our brigade and helping service our local community and broader Victoria," Luke said.
"We did have some terrific assistance from the volunteer recruitment campaign, as we had one of the VMS electronic boards on the side of the road that highlighted CFA was recruiting.
"But what sparked this was that we targeted a different area of our response zone that is normally seen as a bit too far away from our station to respond – however, there is always a role for everyone and we're working on opportunities to close that gap moving forward.
"We've also been targeting non-operational members to work in the community engagement space so they can still be involved and play a role that is not purely operational.
"We held two different open days and recruitment sessions to open the brigade doors and to touch base with those who had expressed interest, as it allowed a natural meet and greet."
Luke said it's been great to see an injection of women in the brigade, with four more on board now, and nine of the new recruits aged between 18 to 34.
"We're really fortunate that, that is generally the average age of our brigade members, because we're in such a booming area that's got a great number of younger people," Luke said.
"The influx of new recruits will ensure Rockbank fire brigade is able to continue serving the community as it develops. Once the new members get through their training, our operational capacity will have almost doubled.
"We've got students, mechanics, engineers and a whole range of occupations coming through that has set us up nicely to have a diverse skillset among our group."
Before starting their training, Luke said they wanted to give the new recruits clarity and a clear timeline of their training schedule so they knew what they were working towards.
"We made it clear during our recruitment phase that we would work hard to get them on the books by May or June, then consolidating their training over a couple of weekends in July with the final assessment to finish," Luke said.
"We have already had seven of our operational recruits pass their assessment day of their General Firefighter Course on 2 August with the remainder due to complete their assessments prior to the high risk weather season."
Elsewhere in the state, 302 Victorians have joined CFA brigades in the South East, 204 in the South West and another 144 in the West.
If you're interested in joining CFA or learning more about volunteering, head to www.cfa.vic.gov.au/volunteer to give us hand.
