By ALANA MITCHELSON
Bellarine SES unit will form a fund-raising team to take the strain off their operational team.
Grants co-ordinator Andrew Scott said the team was collecting funds to create a recuperation area where members could rest in-between jobs.
“They come in clusters but we might get as many as 20 jobs in a row. Then there is a lull where we hang around at our base for some time waiting for the next job,” Mr Scott said.
“At the moment members will often just sit in the truck for hours.
“We run a 24/7 operation of about 60 members at any one time and none of us get paid.
“We’ve always been able to get people out there to the scene but we want to reduce the pressure on operational members who often have to turn out at all hours of the day or night.”
The team was seeking 15 non-operational members for events-based fund-raising and to educate the public on the SES, Mr Scott said.
The extra members would also inform the public on preventative measures to minimise the impact of storm damage to their properties.
Mr Scott said many people wrongly perceived the SES as fire-fighters.
“Many people think the tasks they see us performing on TV are all we do and that can put some people off, but it’s not the case.
“We, for example, have members with disabilities who perform valuable roles without climbing on roofs or cutting up road crash vehicles.”
Unit member David Pytellek said the Bellarine SES was under pressure to expand to meet demand for its services from the peninsula’s growing population.
“The more people there are in the area, the more people there will be needing our services during storms and floods,” he said.
“Government grants relieve some of the stress but they are definitely not enough to run the unit.”
