By Jessica Micallef
Four Sunbury SES volunteers are preparing for a training adventure in the US they hope will make them the “best rescuers” they can be.
Andrew Patience, Jarrod Bell, Matt Simmons and Ben Stanford will travel more than 14,000 kilometres to undergo training rarely made available to Australian rescue operators.
Mr Bell said it was a great opportunity to hone their skills and learn new techniques.
“The key course, the North American Heavy Rescue Symposium, is being held in Georgia … a whole bunch of different courses really focusing on the heavy rescue space. So buses, trucks, building collapse and bridge collapse, road collapse,” Mr Bell said.
“We’re also going to an alternative fuels course, in a city called Spring just outside Houston … things like electric vehicles.
“It’s a really exciting opportunity to go over there and kind of see and learn how American rescue operates, especially in the heavy
space.
“One of the best ways you can learn from other people is by visiting them … we’ve got some irons in the fire with the San Francisco Fire Department and the New York Fire Department.”
Mr Bell said the cost to send them all overseas could be as much as $26,000.
“When we first started talking about this, we made it awfully clear that we didn’t want this to look like a junket,” Mr Bell said.
“However, in talking to a lot of people, people have said they’ve wanted to help us out and that’s really awesome.
“Ben did set up a GoFundMe campaign. But I’m not even looking at that … I’m still going with the intention of funding myself completely.”
The men will spend nearly three weeks in training, but will also pay their respects at Ground Zero in New York to lives lost on 9/11.
“As emergency services volunteers we saw what happened on September 11,” Mr Bell
said.
“It’s a bit of a pilgrimage for us to be able to go there.”
He said he hoped the training would enhance his skills as a rescuer.
“For me, it’s about being the best rescuer I can be,” he said.
“It allows us to bring in new ideas … what is the next best practice, what is the next thing that we can do that maybe shaves three of four minutes off the technique.”
To donate: gofundme.com/volunteers-learn-rescue-in-us
