General News
1 April, 2026
An educational evening
COBDEN State Emergency Service (SES) unit hosted an informative, interactive evening for Country Fire Authority (CFA) brigades from Bostocks Creek and Carpendeit to teach them more about what the SES does in the event of a road crash.
While emergency services often work together during accidents, they rarely get the chance to interact outside of a scene.
Cobden SES deputy controller Sue Sartori said their unit wanted to give these CFA brigades the chance to learn more about their tools and procedures so they could better work together in the event of an accident.
“We had a request from one of the CFA brigades to have a night where we could go through what we do at a road crash scene because CFA have to be on scene in case a vehicle catches fire,” she said.
“Most of the time if they’re going to catch fire they do so upon impact but they can do it later on and while we’re working on them so the CFA is always there.
“They also often help us if we’re shorthanded removing a casualty because we have to have six people carrying a stretcher, so they may be needed to help us do that.
“They often do traffic control as well if the police can’t do it.
“It was just good for them to see what our process is so they understand a bit about what we do, what we’ve got on the truck and what they may be able to assist us with.”
The Cobden SES unit showed the CFA brigades the tools they worked with, including the jaws of life, to help them get more familiar with the work the SES does.
Ms Sartori said while the Cobden SES unit has hosted nights like this before, it’s been a while since the last time, so it was good to have a refresher.
“We showed them basically everything we do on a scene, why we do what we do, making sure the vehicle doesn’t move and checking on the casualty – basically everything we do right from the time we get on scene,” she said.
“The ultimate decision is made by Ambulance Victoria about how the casualty is removed and the timeframe – we can be there for two hours if the patient’s not stable enough to move.
“Sometimes they have to be taken out straight away so we may not do anything, it may all be over in five minutes if they have to be put into ambulance that quickly.
“We tried to cover basically every possible scenario and tell them what our jobs are and also a bit about our training and how long it takes to be able to be accredited for a road crash.
“We have to have two accredited members in the vehicle wherever we go, so because of that we may be shorthanded or we may have another unit helping us.”
Ms Sartori said outside of the work, it was good to get familiar with each other’s faces and have the chance to get to know one another.
“It’s good to see them too because we often just see them on scene but to have them visiting our unit and there were so many of them too, we were rapt, there were more of them than there were of us,” she said.
“The last time we did a big job together was filling the aircraft for the water bombers down at the airport.
“It helps us to become familiar with their faces and they also got to see the tools in our truck and we explained a bit about what tools we use depending on what position the vehicle’s in.
“We spoke about a few jobs we’ve attended and we went through a scenario where we removed a dummy on a stretcher so we were inside the vehicle actually pulling the stretcher out but they were able to help us on the outside of the vehicle taking the stretcher hand to hand.
“We often have jobs like that where we have to do that, especially where it’s a steep incline we have to pass the stretcher through different hands rather than carrying it.”
Ms Sartori said it was a very successful night for both the Cobden SES unit and the CFA brigades, who were able to learn a lot from each other.
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