By KYLIE ADORANTI

Merewether, Carrington, New Lambton, Lambton and Boolaroo fire stations are now classified as temporarily offline.

They have been offline since September when the State Government made the decision as a cost-cutting exercise.

An offline fire station means firefighters cannot use the fire engine unless the station has a minimum requirement of four people to staff it.

These stations are staffed by retained firefighters, who are employed on an on-call basis.

Before the government’s decision, the retained fire stations had one permanent firefighter manning it and retained firefighters were called in when required.

Permanent firefighters were being paid overtime to work at the retained stations.

However, the government changed this when the award arbitration was brought in for permanent and retained fire fighters that resulted in a 4.6 and four per cent pay increase.

The government decided to temporarily close retained fire stations in order to fund these pay rises.

NSW Fire Brigade Employees Union Newcastle sub-branch secretary Luke Russell said the decision to temporarily take the stations offline could potentially put the community in danger.

“There is definitely a price on public and fire fighters’ safety.”

Mr Russell said he was concerned about the amount of time it would now take fire fighters from a permanent fire station to reach a fire in one of the areas where the local retained station was offline.

He contacted local MPs (Newcastle’s Jodi McKay, Wallsend’s Sonia Hornery and Charlestown’s Matthew Morris) about his concerns but received the same response from all of them.

“There was genuine concern from them but they all said nothing could be done because the cost of keeping the fire stations online was too much,” Mr Russell said.

Mr Russell along with local firefighters want the community to speak up about the offline stations by lobbying the government through local State MPs and ministers.

They want residents to help them bring the offline stations back online.