SES crews had a cracking time on Sunday, July 7, smashing glass, cutting cars and getting to know new equipment that might help save your life.
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Volunteers from Moruya, Ulladulla, St George's Basin, Bega and Eden practised rescue techniques, including how to safely smash the windows of a vehicle at a road crash.
Teams applied a special plastic to hold window glass in place, before windows were smashed and doors cut.
Moruya unit deputy commander Lloyd Jones said the technique was an "innovation", where before glass could have landed in casualities' eyes or been inhaled.
"You can actually break that glass now and it'll all stay in one spot," Mr Jones said.
"First thing we do is initial stabilisation, which is stopping the (car) from moving around so we can gain access to it. Secondary stabilisation is making sure the car does not move."
Crews then remove all glass and start extrication.
Although Sunday's "crash" was simulated, crews needed these skills recently to rescue a 67-year-old woman who gained consciousness 17 hours after crashing into a creek near Narooma.
Mr Jones said volunteers from all South Coast "clusters" learned to use equipment they wouldn't normally use in their unit.
"A lot of people wouldn't know how to manage glass on a road crash rescue, or stabilisations of the vehicles," he said.
Mr Jones said the Moruya unit was the "Swiss army knife" of the South Coast because the crew was trained in vertical rescue, road crash rescue, flood rescue and land searches.
"We're a fully-contained general land rescue unit," Mr Jones said.
Bega unit commander Rod Gould introduced specialised flood rescue equipment to volunteers, such as an Arkangel rescue boat with highline ropes, and an extendable reach pole.
"The idea of (the pole) is you can get a life jacket ... to somebody in a stranded car without putting yourself at risk," Mr Jones said.
"It's monumentally heavy.
"That pole will extend with hooks and various attachments on the end of it, so we can feed that out to somebody on the vehicle and say 'put that life jacket on, grab hold of this rope', and you can do all of this from the shore and you're not putting yourself in peril."
Mr Jones said he and Mr Gould used flood rescue equipment at the Bendethera campground in 2016 when more than 30 people were stranded and crews were on deck for four-and-a-half days.
"We were on one side of the flowing river and the campers were on the other side, and we were considering rigging up something precisely like this (highline ropes) in order to traverse the people from one side of the river to the other," Mr Jones said.
"(The rescue) was the biggest single operation the SES has ever done.
"There were helicopters there, it had everything going on.
"We were helicoptering food into them ... (one man's) medication ran out so we had to put some flood rescue techniques in place there to get him out so he could get to his medical supplies."
The Moruya rescue activity day also involved training in teamwork and communication.
Mr Jones said crews were always looking for new volunteers. For more information about volunteering, go to www.ses.nsw.gov.au/get-involved/volunteer/