The wind yesterday was nowhere near as strong as today. Still it was enough to bring down some guttering and facia on a block of flats in Kingsford. The block was three storeys tall, but the material was stretching from the roof to the windows of the flats on the first floor. We were able to climb onto the roof of the laundry and secure the guttering to prevent it falling further. A quick job, but the call came just as I was going to bed. Ain’t it always the way.

A training exercise to test the skills of the State Emergency Service was almost called off mid stream when a massive storm hit the area.

A stormwater drain being used for pumping and sandbagging practice, rose over a metre in less than ten minutes during the deluge. Tarping practice, which was being done on a large metal frame in the path of the storm was also suspended. The Westpac Surf Life Saving helicopter, which was helping out in the exercise, was also grounded during the storm, with the crew taking shelter in a mobile command van at Cooper Park.

The storm soon passed and the exercise resumed.

Check out the highlights below or on YouTube.

These are not two things that you would normally associate with each other, however they came together last weekend. As part of a Team Leader course, we had an exercise where we had to make a truck from Lego that would carry a piece of cement for 5 metres, and convince the judges to purchase our truck using a 2 minute commercial. We decide to go high tech and make a real commercial, and of course the most successful commercials are those with a song. Since it was about the SES, what better tune to use than SOS by ABBA.

The result is now on You-Tube.

If you are wondering about the start, the orange Rhino was our team mascot. His name was Neil.

As I write this, the skies are black, the thunder is shaking the windows and the rain is pouring down. Another summer thunderstorm has hit the city with up to 38mm falling within an hour. No doubt the emergency calls to SES will soon follow.

Sydney has endured a continuous series of storms which began on 4 December when a large hailstorm hit Blacktown in the outer west. Thousands of roofs were destroyed and some streets did not have an undamaged house. With the huge amount of work to be done and the upcoming Xmas holidays, few of the houses were fixed immediately and Blacktown was subsequently hit by another windstorm (which damaged many of the tarps) and further rainstorms. throughout December and January. I have now been to Blacktown more times in the last 2 months than in my whole life.

Last week it was the turn of Bankstown and Liverpool, high winds and hail brought down trees, damaged roofs and soaked the ground to capacity. When record downpours fell the following week, there was widespread flooding, some road closure and a few evacuations. The rain stopped just before the George River overflowed and river levels dropped to safe by the end of the day.

With the rain we are having now, the poor people of Blacktown will be enduring more leaking roofs and soggy yards. Just another summer in Sydney.

Ain’t it always the way, you just settle down to a quiet rainy day’s pottering and the phone rings with a request to fix a leaky roof. Despite being the State Emergency Service, I sometimes think we should be called the State I couldn’t be bothered maintaining my house Service, or in this case the State I’ve employed dodgy builders Service.

It had been raining heavily overnight and the flat had water coming through the ceiling in two rooms. We asked how long it had been happening and they said “Months, but it got bad last night” (ie when it was raining). Above the flat was a large patio area that was being resurfaced because it was leaking. The builders (who couldn’t be contacted to fix it) had tarped the area, but missed one vital area. At one side of the patio, there was a laundry. There was a gap about 1 metre wide 10cm deep between the front of the laundry and the patio. Although it had been tarped, the rain was hitting the laundry door and dribbling straight down the gap into the ceiling of the flat below.

We re-tarped the doorway and hopefully the problem is fixed. At least it will last until Monday when the builders come back.

Back in March my SES unit attended a Rescue Competition and I videoed the event. The week before, we had carried out a mass casualty exercise and I videoed that as well. I have recently posted both videos to YouTube and have now discovered how to link them to my blog. So here they are.

Mass Casualty Exercise

Rescue competition

Enjoy!

Well, for most people a long weekend is a chance to relax and put your feet up, go camping, or catch up on jobs around the house. That was my intention as well, but the onset of winter storms changed all that.

On the Friday night we spent most of the night cleaning up a large tree that had fallen on a Volvo and was blocking a driveway. Then throughout Saturday and Sunday various fallen trees and roof jobs had to be attended to, including pulling down a TV aerial on a 3m tower which was threatening to come crashing down in the wind at any moment.

The highlight here was a three storey block of flats that had had a large tree fall down on the roof. The tree had been removed by arborists, but the gaping holes in the roof remained. At first we thought we would need a cherry-picker to place a tarp on the roof, but looking at the access to the property, this option was soon ruled out. Then we came up with the idea of laying the tarp from inside the roof. We gained access from the manhole in the ceiling and set about rearranging the tiles so we only had one or two big holes to cover. Running a safety line along the ridge capping and anchoring it back through the holes in the roof, I was able to safely move around on the roof and roughly position the tarpaulin. Once the guy lines were thrown down to my team mates on the ground, it could be move into a more ideal position. As the last corner went into place I crawled back under the tarp, and back into the roof cavity. Read the rest of this entry »

Although many rural SES units do vertical rescue, you only get the opportunity to train in it if you are a member of one of those units. However, situations arise in general rescue where some of these skills could come in handy. This is where the value of the “Wellington Wombats” weekend lies.

Organised by the Wellington SES and held at Wellington Caves, it gives members of other SES units a chance to practice their general rescue techniques in confined and difficult spaces. We started out with using a “self lowering technique” to enter the caves (for some reasons “abseiling” is a naughty word in the SES), followed by some basic cave exploration and finishing off with rescuing casualties from deep underground.

The weekend fills both days and the evening in between is a great opportunity to meet members of other units and swap “war stories”.

If you ever have an opportunity to go on this weekend I can thoroughly recommend it

When you are in the State Emergency Service, you are never quite sure what is going to happen during what is normally your spare time. On Friday night I came home and was settling down to a quiet beer before the TV, when the call came through about a collapsing veranda in Randwick.

We went out to the job to find a first storey veranda that was structurally sound in the middle but completely rotten around the outside. We ended up demolishing half of the veranda before it could fall down.

Then on Saturday there was a call about another house in Randwick that had slate tiles falling off the roof. It was a steep slippery roof on a two storey building so we had to call in the aid of a cherry picker. Once it arrived, the job was cleaned up fairly quickly, but the cherry picker took forever to arrive. It is always interesting to go back to my normal job on Monday and be asked “What did you do on the weekend?” and show them the photos.

The State Emergency Services Southern Sydney Region rescue competition was held yesterday and the team from Randwick came fourth. This was a vast improvement of the previous result two years ago when they came seventh. The team of six worked their way throuh seven different rescue scenarios including rescue from heights, rescue from depths and a mass casualty scenario. The whole event was filmed and during the year a series of training videos will be produced to help give new recruits a idea of the variety of activities in which the SES is involved. A series of photos can be found in the Randwick SES photo gallery.