Originally Posted by
Ascend Charlie
"Aid to the Civil Power" requires a lot of justification. All the civil avenues of performing the task have to be exploited, otherwise somebody will bleat that the Army has taken his job on the fire lines.
Wont happens Rural fire fighters are a volunteer and not paid
In australia for disaster relief, while it does vary between states, there is a long standing and running agreement that the military can be used in disaster relief at the request of the state govt and the permission of the commonwealth govt. I have never heard of it being rejected, where I live the army has multiple times been called in assist, heck last one was february when they when they used armored vehicles for flood evacuations. Time before that after a cyclone there was section of military going around and providing manual labor the a civilian emergency services clearing down trees because they weren't allowed to use chainsaws. From what I understand the only legal issue is that they are not covered by good samaratin laws while officially working for the ADF
During the cyclone season there is always landing ships (Choules, Canberra or adelaide) designated for be ready to respond to cyclones on the northern coast or in the pacific at request on state or foreign governments
Our MRH - 90 are bambi bucket certified, I believe chinooks are as well, there bambi black hawks operating but they are civilian from the US. Our hueys are certified and theres a dozen ex military operating atm, one crashed last friday
(navy MRH-90 and seahawks have been bucket certified and trained, dunno if that is still current and if that rolls over the army MRH-90 / blackhawks
https://news.navy.gov.au/en/Nov2014/Fleet/1624/MRH90-Preparing-for-Bushfire-Season.htm_