Good team makes Paul’s job easier
by Keith Anderson Paramedic Paul James of Warragul says he was surprised when notified he would receive an Ambulance Service Medal (ASM) in the Australia Day honours list but, referring to his colleagues, said it “is not hard to look good if surrounded by good people”.
Mr James, now based at the Morwell ambulance service headquarters where he is group manager of the Wellington district covering an area extending from Moe to Yarram, was recognised for a career extending more than 25 years during which he has played leading roles in several major emergencies in Gippsland.
His record highlights that the life of a paramedic is much more than “helping people that fall ill or have an accident at home or are involved in car accident”.
The most recent major emergency in which he led from the front was the Hazelwood coal mine fire, an event that he recalls was “totally unexpected and worse than anybody thought” and for which – unlike other emergencies – there were no well-practiced plans in place.
Mr James established the Community Health Assessment Centre at Morwell bringing together a team of 150 paramedics and nurses to give free health checks and arrange referrals and transfers of patients affected by smoke and ash to medical clinics, community health services or hospital emergency departments.
Advice was given on how best to look after themselves while the fire continued.
The centre that was set up at Morwell has become a model facility for Ambulance Victoria to adopt in future emergencies.
Mr James also played pivotal roles during floods that impacted most of Gippsland in 2011 and before that the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.
The February day in 2009 when he was called to Neerim South to manage the evacuation of residents at the local hospital was also his birthday.
The party planned for that night went ahead – without him!
Mr James is modest, yet proud, about the positive mention he received in the report of a Royal Commission into emergency services handling of the fires that mostly highlighted negatives.
What most people don’t realise that during emergencies, which can take up many of the ambulance service’s people and equipment resources, it still has to attend to “normal business”.
His leadership, organisational and planning skills have also resulted in development of response capabilities for emergencies in wilderness areas inaccessible to ambulance vehicles and on the water – flood and boating accidents – working with other agencies including water police and coast guards.
Mr James, married and with a son and a daughter, was a sales and marketing representative when he moved to Neerim South in the early 1990s.
He became involved with the local volunteer community ambulance service, liked what he was doing there, became a student paramedic spending four years at Sale, then to Morwell and later Warragul as a station officer before returning to the Morwell base.
In April he’ll be heading to Government House in Melbourne to be presented with his ASM by the Governor, The Honourable Linda Dessau.
It will not be the first time he will have been in vice-regal or, indeed, regal company.
In 2016 Mr James travelled to Buckingham Palace where he met the Queen and Prince Phillip and was presented with a Certificate of Merit by Prince Michael of Kent in recognition of more than 40 years’ service to the surf life saving movement at club, state and national levels.
He still continues that involvement.