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Hey! I was on this search yesterday.

There was a fatal accident just out of town yesterday. It was a single vehicle accident. A car left the road and collided with a tree.

I was in the first of the two SES trucks that responded. As we left the depot the latest information we had was that one person was trapped. En route we got a second pager message indicating that the casualty was out of the vehicle but had passed away at the scene.

When we arrived at the accident we found that it was the son of a senior member of our SES unit. It’s distressing enough having to attend a fatal accident but when it’s one of your own extended SES family it’s just awful.

The SES quickly activated a group they call ‘peer support’ which is an internal counseling service that help members get over tragedies like this. It was a fairly subdued afternoon and evening, but it did help having all the members who attended get together and discuss what happened, what we were thinking about, etc.

Although they’re unlikely to read my meaningless little blog, my sincere sympathies go out to the family. The SES member involved has done an enormous amount of work for the SES (and therefore the community) over the years, and is someone I have an tremendous amount of respect for. That this has happened to them is just terrible.

At SES training last night there was a long and involved discussion on the problems associated with us being called out to accidents.

When Joe Q Public (that’s you!) comes across an accident, you call 000 and ask for either the police or an ambulance. There’s a very convoluted procedure behind the scenes where D24 and ESTA (the emergency services telecommunication authority) will dispatch the relevant services to the incident.

One problem that commonly occurs is that the SES are not activated at the same time as the police and ambulance. The SES should be activated if (a) the caller informs the 000 operator that there are people trapped in a vehicle, or (b) the accident occurs on a section of road where the posted speed limit is 80km/hr or above, regardless of whether people are trapped or not. The operator should ask the caller whether other emergency services are required, but they generally don’t.

This can often result in a situation where the police and ambulance are on scene long before the SES are, and when casualties can’t be treated properly because they’re trapped in a vehicle, precious time is lost.

So here’s my plea: if you come across an accident, you should call 000 and ask for the police. When you speak to the D24 emergency desk, be proactive and tell the operator whether people are trapped or not (and how many) as well as how many people are injured. Specifically saying “there are x people trapped and road crash rescue services are required” could well save a life or two.

Lisa and I were just settling down to watch the pilot episode of The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency last night when the pager went off. There was a single car accident out toward Dunolly. Two people were already out but the rear seat passenger was trapped.

This is a shot of what’s left of the car after we bent the roof back to get the passenger out.

All three people in the car were very lucky; they left the road on a fairly wide bend, chewed up ~100 meters of dirt embankment, cleaned the branches off one side of a tree and came to rest in the branches of the next tree along.

I have no idea what speed they were doing, but it’s pretty safe to say they weren’t gently and safely cruising at 95km/hr. I think that the police might have ticked the ‘[ ] Speed’ box for this one.

Attended my first road crash rescue this afternoon. It was a single vehicle accident — a Tarago van rolled (and rolled, and rolled) in a 100km/hr zone. It wasn’t in good shape. Six occupants, two of which were taken off to the Alfred. Not good. Given the state of the front of the vehicle, however, they’re actually pretty lucky to still be alive. I am so not going to buy a Tarago.

Update from The Age: Six people were taken to hospital, including two with serious head injuries, after their mini-van rolled in central Victoria just after 3pm (AEST). [June 22nd]

The weekend just gone I did another SES course. This time it was Navigation in Urban and Rural Environments, more commonly referred to simply as map and nav. It was all about map reading and navigation.

The course started with a two hour theory session on Friday night, and that was continued on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon we hit the bush to work through some basic navigation. Saturday evening we were given the first part of our assessment – the theory side of it. That was fairly straightforward, and most of us finished it fairly quickly before heading outside to the campfire and a cold can or two.

Sunday morning was the practical side of the assessment. We broke up into teams of two and were each given a series of coordinates that represented points in the bush we had to navigate to. At each point was a marker, and we had to record some details of that marker. When we got back the instructors uploaded our track from the sealed GPS we carried and verified that we had taken the correct path.

My new chum Steve and I walked about 5.4km and hit every marker pretty much spot on. We only had trouble with one of them, and that was because we misjudged the distance from the previous marker and started looking about 100m short of where it actually was.

I was already fairly familiar with lots of the mapping work that we did, but I didn’t have particularly good bush navigation skills. I passed just fine though, so I must have learnt something.

The weekend was held at Camp Yumbunga at Lake Eppalock. That’s the Ferntree Gully and district school camp, so having grown up in that area it was the Lake Eppalock camp I went to in primary school (many, many years ago). I didn’t remember anything of the place at all.

No photos up yet (haven’t had a chance to process them) but I’ll get them up in the next day or two.

I’ve just spent a whole weekend on an SES search and rescue training course. The weekend was all about how to search for objects and people and doing as little damage as possible in the process. We covered the way people go missing (it’s amazing how different people go missing and get lost in different ways), how to methodically search for them, how to preserve evidence at crime scenes, etc. It was a real eye opener.

Lisa did a champion job (as usual) looking after the kids and the house while I was away.

Last night’s SES training was a little different for me. Instead of studying theory in the unit offices I got to go out on the road and do some serious damage to a couple of car wrecks that we had for training. The unit just took delivery of a “heavy rescue” hydraulic kit, which consists of a set of cutters, a set of spreaders, two hydraulic rams and a hydraulic pump that’s capable of running three things at once.

The spreaders were fairly heavy (25kg) but they’re extremely powerful. The tip is about 10mm across when they’re fully closed, but they open up to 830mm, so they’ll easily fit into the gap between a couple of bent panels and allow you to open up a door. They open and close with 25 tons of force, so a mere car lock is nothing for them. They’ll close with the same force too, so crushing a car’s roof pillar is trivial.

The cutters aren’t nearly as heavy (only about 15kg) but they’re pretty tough too. They’ll cut through metal like it isn’t there. We took the roof off two cars — first use the spreaders to crush a pillar so it’s thin and easy for the cutters to get a grip, then use the cutters to snip through the pillar like it isn’t there. We took the roof off an old Commodore and it was pretty easy. The Lancer coupe was a little tricker because it’s a two door hatchback (very wide rear pillars) but still no real trouble. With that car we cut the top and bottom of the A pillars off and took them away completely, then had two people with a crowbar at the rear of the roof while two people lifted the front of the roof and bent it over backwards.

We also tried out the new hydraulic rams we got. We used them to push the dashboard and firewall off the front of the Commodore: cut the windscreen across the bottom, cut the buttom of the A pillars off, then use the rams to push from the bottom of the B pillars to the top of the front door frames. The dashboard and firewall move forward without any trouble at all.

We got the new heavy rescue kit (like about 50 other units) because of the increasing number of heavy vehicle accidents: trucks, buses and trains. I’ve talked to a few people in our unit and car accidents are way down on what they used to be, primarily because cars these days are safer than ever. People who were in the unit 20 or 30 years ago had to deal with a lot more carnage than we do these days. If you do have to deal with an accident today it’s more likely to involve heavier vehicles and cars with higher strength doors, side impact structures, etc, hence the heavy rescue kit.

I’ve considered joining either the CFA or the SES for a while now. Both organizations do a great job for the community, especially in rural Victoria. I’ve chatted to people who are in both organizations and decided on the SES. Tonight was my first night, so it was all about admin and a light introduction to basic training. I’ve naturally got a way to go before I can be a productive and useful member of the unit, but the basic training is important, and everyone has to go through it. Having said that, when they found out I had komputer skillz their eyes lit up, so maybe I can help out in some way before I’m trained.