Cade Lucas
The Werribee CFA Rescue Team have confirmed their status as one of the country’s elite units, by winning two events and finishing third overall at the national titles in Adelaide last weekend.
The six person Werribee crew took out both the time critical and entrapped events and were only beaten by first placed Adelaide and second placed Toowoomba in the overall.
Despite winning the NSW title earlier this year, Werribee Team Leader Daniel May said the results were above expectations.
“Well above, we didn’t anticipate winning those events,” said May.
“We’re up against some of the better teams in Australasia and there were teams from England and Hong Kong too.
25 teams overall.”
May explained that each rescue is judged against three criteria.
“There’s three disciplines, command, technical and medical and scenarios are drawn up at random to replicate road crashes that have happened.”
Along with the two categories they won, Werribee finished third in the industrial rescue event, fourth in the technical team category and May was adjudged the fourth best team leader.
He said these results justified the amount of preparation the team had put in.
“There’s a huge amount of effort and training that goes into these competitions”
Logistics, months of training, accessing cars.”
Given these competitions are all based on motor vehicle accidents, cars are needed in order to prepare.
May called on anyone with old vehicles to get in touch.
“Any cars that the community is willing to donate to the brigade, we’re always looking.”
Serving the community is ultimately what emergency services are all about and May said competing in events like the one in Adelaide will help them do that.
“It’s a great opportunity to network with other teams across Australasia, refine our techniques and learn new things as well.
“We’ll bring those techniques back to the wider brigade and it assists in our rescue response capability to Wyndham.”
