YOU’RE IN GOOD HANDS WITH SKILLED FIREFIGHTERS
BEING hauled up a threestorey vertical cliff is not for everyone. But when your life is in the hands of a firey, it’s less daunting.
As a “prop” in the day of firefighter, I learnt first-hand that the role of emergency workers is far more than putting “wet on red”.
“Our job has changed so much over the years, there’s very much a technical aspect to the work we do,” Gold Coast zone commander Greg Tomlinson said.
“(We) do vertical rescue, confined space rescue, swift water rescue, trench rescue and then urban search and rescue, in the likes of earthquakes.
“So we were very much involved with the New Zealand earthquake in Christchurch.”
And to keep firefighters in tiptop shape for any emergency, they were also expected to go through rescue drills regularly.
Rescue technicians even learn up to 25 different styles of knotting.
“A lot of the work outside of the fire calls is preparation,” Mr Tomlinson said of a typical day for a firefighter.
“Training is a key part of what they would do on a given day. On night shift, they’re probably not so much out in the field, but they’ll sit in and do the theory side of things.
“We work with communities a lot, so things like fire education, teaching Year 1 students about the risk of fire ... and a lot of small children tend to be scared of the uniform.”