Werribee Fire Brigade has shown they’re not just trained to deal with fires and car accidents.
A team of 15 volunteers, led by Mick Davie, scrubbed up to help medical staff in a delicate operation at Werribee Mercy Hospital earlier this month.
Doctors had been unable to free a woman’s hand from an electric mincer after a workplace accident in Point Cook.
“She was pretty lucky,” Mr Davie said. “Every finger except for her middle one managed to go between the blades. Two fingers were dislodged and damaged, but the middle one was destroyed.”
Mr Davie said his job was to assess the situation and begin pulling the mincer apart, working alongside nurses and doctors while they sedated the woman.
“It proved to be too painful for the lady, even with anaesthetic. We could see her flinching, so we had to stop,” Mr Davie said.
“She was fully sedated and taken to theatre, where we joined her.”
Mr Davie said the volunteers worked closely with surgeons to free the woman’s hand in theatre.
“We got out our hand tools – spanners and socket sets – and began to rotate the device backwards to get her fingers out,” he said.
“The mincer was made of cast stainless-steel, so we couldn’t just cut it off. We could have gotten an industrial angle grinder, but the metal would’ve absorbed all the heat and then gone into her hand.
“We had a good team of rescue operators helping out.”
After freeing the woman’s hand, it was discovered that her middle finger was “hanging on by a piece of skin”.
At this point the brigade volunteers bowed out and left the rest of the job to the surgeons.
“It shows that the brigade’s rescue capabilities are for things far and wide,” Mr Davie said.
“Yes, we even help out in industrial accidents.”
