Talk by Stephen Tuck (Controller, Tatura SES Unit) to Tatura
Probus Club at Lagozzino’s Top Pub, 28 July 2016.
Good morning everyone and thank you for the invitation to
speak to you today. As your president
has just said, my name is Stephen Tuck and I’m the Controller at the Tatura
State Emergency Service Unit.
I’m sure most of you already know what the SES does, but by
way of summary we are the control agency for storms, floods, earthquakes and
tsunamis in Victoria. That is, our role
is to guide the community in preparing for these events, manage the response
when they occur, and coordinate recovery after they have occurred. In addition, we are a support agency for a
large number of other emergency events and provide specialist assistance to
other emergency response agencies. For
example, Victoria Police are the control agency for missing persons; the SES is
regularly tasked with providing teams to undertake searches in rural and remote
areas.
One of our key roles, both as a support agency and control
agency, is conducting rescues and in particular road crash rescue (for which
the control agency is Victoria Police).
The accident at Harston earlier this week, was one which
we attended and where we conducted a rescue.
A Little History
As best we’ve been able to establish, the Tatura SES Unit
started life in about 1968 as the Shire of Rodney Civil Defence Organisation. Along with most civil defence services at
that time, its role would have tended heavily to preparation for alleviating
the effects of war, and particularly nuclear war. Even today in some SES sheds, one still comes
across publications covering how to set up a small refugee camp, how to
register displaced persons, how to operate an emergency telephone system and so
on. As the threat of war diminished
through the 1980s and into the 1990s, the SES directed its energies towards
natural disaster relief, and along the way acquired a rescue function which had
previously been carried out by St John Ambulance (I was interested to learn the
other day that the Westgate Bridge collapse in 1970 was the last major rescue
operation carried out by St Johns).
Civil Defence practice, Canberra, 1968 (National
Archives of
Australia, Image No A1200/L78195)
Organization
The organization today consists of 150 separate units around
the state. They range in size from less
than a dozen members (like Mitta Mitta) to over a hundred (like Wyndham). Each unit has a large amount of discretion in
how it organizes itself and the work it focuses on. Many units outside of Melbourne, for example,
are responsible for carrying out road crash rescues, and they train and equip
themselves for this work. Others have
developed a particular expertise in things they are often asked to do. For example, Warragul and Mansfield are
routinely asked to do land searches, and Craigieburn is regularly tasked with
assisting the police with evidence searches.
Each Unit will have a controller and a number of Deputy
Controllers, and below them Team and Section Leaders with specific areas of
responsibility (for example, equipment maintenance; finance). The most striking this about the service is
that there is, genuinely, enough work for everyone. A member who is young and hale and hearty can
certainly find work “on the tools”.
However, a member who has a few injuries or who isn’t as young as they
used to be will still be a critical part of a unit – for example, by
maintaining chainsaws, managing inventory or finance, or by developing a
cluster of specialist skills. The
accident at Harston this week was an excellent example of precisely that: The
team that went out to the scene ran into difficulty communicating with dispatch
and only poor radio communication could be achieved. However, one of our members who is currently
not able to go out into the field remained at the shed managing
communications. The teams in the trucks
were able to communicate with the shed and he relayed the communications to
dispatch. Without that sort of support,
we simply could not have done the work we needed to do.
Our Unit
The Tatura unit currently has about 20 members of whom 15 are active and 12 operational. We have three vehicles –- A heavy rescue truck, which is our workhorse and which carries all of the equipment which we might be required to use for any given job including storm damage response, rescue and flood control.
- A four-wheel drive Nissan Patrol, which is chiefly used as a transport vehicle and which would be used to tow a ‘storm trailer’. This last item is a heavy trailer carrying all of the gear we would usually carry for responding to severe weather events: plastic sheeting, rooftop safety equipment, chainsaws, lighting and so on.
- A four-wheel drive Nissan Navara, which carries lighting and chainsaws and is best suited to responding to fallen trees which cause traffic hazards.
In addition, we are a ‘boat’ unit. That is, the State organization has allocated
us a Savage Jabiru and trained a number of our members to undertake flood
rescues.
Road Rescue
The SES has largely avoided becoming entangled in the
dispute between the Country Fire Authority and the United Firefighters
Union. You may be aware however that one
of the claims in the disputed Enterprise Bargaining Agreement is that paid
firefighters be trained and equipped to undertake road crash rescue. This would potentially affect the SES,
although my personal view is that this shouldn’t be treated as a cause for
agitation: at present a review of Victoria’s road crash rescue arrangements is
underway and changes affecting both the CFA and SES are likely to occur. However, the review has been long expected:
current road rescue arrangements were established in 2002 and it’s appropriate
to confirm that they still match the strengths and capacities of all agencies.Current road rescue arrangements in Victoria sound more convoluted than in fact they are. Broadly speaking, Victoria Police are the control agency for road accidents. For example, they investigate for any driving offences that may have occurred, manage traffic and assure public safety, lay any charges and (in extreme cases) prepare reports for the coroner. Ambulance Victoria are responsible for patient care and transportation of casualties to hospital. The CFA manages fire suppression and hazardous chemical control. The SES is responsible for extrication of trapped casualties; we are also regularly asked to assist police by providing lighting and other support following accidents.
Somewhat surprisingly, because our role is to carry out road crash rescue, we technically have no role where a casualty is deceased (and therefore beyond the reach of rescue). However, where the deceased is (so to speak) trapped in a wrecked vehicle, the police will usually ask us to extricate the body. In such a case we do this with the same techniques and professionalism as we would use on a live casualty, showing proper respect for the dignity of the deceased.
Current challenges
Like most volunteer organizations, the SES has a constant
challenge to recruit and retain members: some of you may be aware that the Tatura-Harston Red Cross unit has had precisely such a difficulty. On the other hand, as the search for Luke
Shambrook near Eildon last year showed, members of the public will reliably
step forward when emergencies occur.
This poses some challenges, because emergency work (if performed
defectively) can be extremely dangerous to both casualties and rescuers. That said, this is a not new problem. One of the assumptions which guided civil
defence in the cold war was that in the event of a nuclear war, there would
simply not be enough emergency responders to deal with a major
catastrophe. Instead, the assumption was
that emergency response would be carried out by people with no or minimal
training, with trained responders providing the direction and backbone of the
response (as in the film Warning Red from 1956).
Ultimately this may be the future for emergency services of
all types.
For our part, the SES trains people for all of the core
functions of the SES: that is, the initial training any new member receives are
the basic skills in rope work, lighting, machinery use and so on that are
deployed at most SES incidents, as well as training in first aid and work
health and safety. After this, a person
can develop their skill set as much or as little as they please, with training
in use of chainsaws, general rescue, working on rooves or as part of a ground
crew, undertaking storm and flood mitigation, undertaking road crash rescue,
liaising with the media and undertaking community education. Overwhelmingly the training is nationally
accredited and transferrable.
The other particular challenge facing many units (including
ours) is dealing with culturally and linguistically diverse communities. In the Shepparton area, of course, we have a
large population of speakers of Dari and Pashto, and a seasonal backpacker
population speaking a range of languages.
This obviously can be challenging with establishing the nature and
extent of a person’s emergency. There
are also anecdotal reports of cultural matters which may present a challenge:
for example, a gentleman from some Middle Eastern cultures may object to being given
directions by a woman, or to having a man speak directly to the gentleman’s
wife (although I must say, I’m yet to meet anyone who has encountered such a
problem first hand, and I think regardless of a person’s culture, almost
everyone understands when someone is there to help them). This too, however, is only a problem to the
extent that we allow it to be. A project
for our unit over the next six months is targeted recruitment aimed at
Shepparton’s Afghan and related populations.
Conclusion
Overall then, the Tatura SES Unit has good reason to be
optimistic about its future. It has a history
of service stretching back almost fifty years.
Even though there are a few challenges in our current environment, there
are great opportunities for members of the public to serve the community while
also benefiting themselves.
Thank you again for inviting me to speak today.
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