South Australian Country Fire Service

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SA Country Fire Service

CFS logo
Established	1976
Location	South Australia
Region served	6
Services	Control Agency for Fire, Rescue and Hazmat
Members	434 brigades 784 appliances
Current CO	Brett Loughlin
Staff	190 paid staff
Volunteers	~13,500
Website	Official CFS Website

The South Australian Country Fire Service (SACFS, commonly abbreviated as CFS) is a volunteer based fire service in the Australian state of South Australia. The CFS has responsibility as the Control Agency for firefighting, rescues and hazardous materials and inland waterways in the country regions of South Australia. Its official mission is "To protect life, property and the environment from fire and other emergencies whilst protecting and supporting our personnel and continuously improving."

Many parts of Australia are sparsely populated and under significant risk of bushfire. It would be prohibitively expensive for each Australian town or village to have a paid fire service (department). The compromise adopted is to have government funded equipment and training but volunteer fire-fighters to perform the duties of regular fire-fighters. In South Australia, the name for the volunteer service is the CFS. Each Australian State and Territory has its own service, such as the Country Fire Authority in the state of Victoria and the Rural Fire Service in the state of New South Wales.

In the state capital Adelaide and larger towns in South Australia, a conventional paid service exists, the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service (SAMFS). Most towns (over 430 communities) rely on the CFS. Several Adelaide suburbs that retain extensive scrubland have CFS stations whose area of operation overlaps that of the SAMFS with joint training exercises sometimes organised for major community facilities such as the Flinders Medical Centre. For urban incidents, both services will often attend with the Metropolitan Fire Service taking command.