Local emergency teams crowded around a scene of gore and disaster on Sunday morning at Falcon Fire Station, but it was not quite what it seemed.
What appeared to be a seriously nasty, multi-passenger car accident was actually an elaborate training demonstration for emergency crews.
The demo allowed the Falcon Volunteer Fire Rescue Service (VFRS) and the Dawesville St John’s Ambulance volunteers and paramedics to practice their skills and become comfortable with working together, which is of course essential in emergency situations.
Debbie Gillard, the volunteer development officer at Dawesville ambulance depot, said: “We train at the [ambulance] depot every month, but we try and do this like a couple of times a year, that it’s right out in the open and include the fireys, or another SES.”
Ms Gillard said the scenario on Sunday was a multi-patient car accident, with a motorbike and multiple patients inside the car with multiple injuries.
“It’s a drill, they’ve come off their motorbike so we’re putting on bandages, fraction splits, helmet removal, treating burns, broken bones, amputated finger,” she said.
“We had to extricate from the car, so the fireys had to pop the window, and using spinal boards to get them out, so some of the doors don’t open, so they’ve got to get in and do it all… proper drills that actually do happen on the road.”
The fireys used hydraulic tools to forcibly remove the door of an old written-off car, while the paramedics monitored the ‘victims’, who were mostly children of the ambulance and fire volunteers.