Photo: Coonamble SES has seen a surge in high school-aged volunteers, including Jack Page and Mitch Corby.
The State Emergency Services (SES) is experiencing a youth resurgence, with eight new young volunteers in the past ten weeks.
Coonamble SES Commander John ‘Tiny’ Lewis has been with the SES for eighteen years, and says the new recruits are full of energy and enthusiasm.
“They’re full of energy. A lot of them are very interested in the flood rescue side.”
People can join the SES from sixteen years old and begin training immediately.
New recruits such as 17 year-old Mitch Corby are brimming with enthusiasm.
“I thought it was fun, you get to experience something new, and you get to help people,” he said
Mitch joined the SES over two months ago, and plans to do specialist training to become a chainsaw operator.
Once someone joins the SES, they are put on a probation period of three months and begin undergoing training.
“We’ve done all this storm training in the last couple of weeks, both on ground and the height training,” explained Mr Lewis.
“With the weekly training, they’re learning those skills so when they go to their courses, they’re fairly well prepared.
“That’s generally where we start with our training, then once they’ve done that, they can branch out in any direction that they wish. They may wish to do flood rescue, or they may wish to do general rescue.”
Weekly Thursday night training sessions can yield up to ten attendees, many of them between the ages of 17 and 21.
John’s 22 year-old son Lane Lewis joined the SES at 16, and is now the training co-ordinator for the SES Barwon cluster. He was charged of coordinating hundreds of volunteers during flooding events in Port Macquarie is May.
Despite the stress of the situation, he says “you sort of just do it.”
“Sitting around worrying doesn’t help, that’s why we do so much training so it just sets in. You learn to trust yourself and the equipment,” said John.
SES is involved in:
- Flood rescue
- Land search
- Land rescue
- Storm and Water damage operations
The Coonamble SES say they are grateful to have such enthusiasm from young people within the community.