KALAMUNDA residents are calling for upgrades to fire safety by building a new station for the Pickering Brook brigade and the state Liberals have pledged to meet the demand if elected.

Pickering Brook resident and business owner Michael Vinci said he’d seen quite a lot of bushfires come through over the years and had to fight them with the heavy machinery from his welding business.

“I’ve had first-hand experience with it and there’s been quite a few times where there’s a fire breakout and sometimes it can be the challenge for brigades travelling from Kalamunda or Mundaring to make it on time,” he said.

“It has been an issue and there’s been times where it’s gotten out of control before we could do something.

“If we had something local, we could get onto it straight away and put it out before it got out of control.”

Mr Vinci said the Pickering Brook community had been calling for more support against bushfires ever since a particularly bad fire struck the area in 2004.

“We had a bad fire in the summer of 2004 and 2005 and the idea started that we were going to need our own fire station or something to be able to get onto it faster,” he said.

“It’s a pretty high-risk area here and we can back up Roleystone, Mundaring and all those areas with our equipment too if we had a station built here.

“This is the fire front if we get it coming from the top of the hills.

“Sometimes they break out and if we got to them within 10 to 15 minutes, we could get it under control quite quickly but by the time teams come from Kalamunda in 25 to 30 minutes, it’s spread too much and become too hard to control for one unit.”

Liberal candidate for Kalamunda Adam Hort said the present fire response was managed by Kalamunda Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade in Walliston, resulting in delayed response times of up to 13 minutes.

“West Australians have the right to know that when they call in an emergency, their first responders will have the resources they need – whether that is police, ambulance or firefighters,” he said.

“This $4.9 million commitment will establish a central hub for firefighting resources, helping attract and retain volunteers, and strengthen our region’s firefighting and emergency response capabilities.”