The NSW SES is celebrating 60 years of service this year, the organisation began in 1955 following disastrous floods across NSW that caused major loss of life as well as massive damage to property and infrastructure. The NSW SES has grown and diversified since its inception and has been instrumental in the response to many disasters and emergencies.
The NSW SES is the combat agency for Floods, Tsunami and Storm operations. The SES also provides emergency response in the areas of road crash rescue, vertical rescue, flood rescue, land searches and many other supporting roles to other Emergency Services. The SES volunteers in their orange uniforms (jaffa’s) are often referred to as the “Swiss Army Knife of the Emergency Services”.
For me the SES has been a part of my life for more than 22 years. Through this series of Geo-Art caches I want to share some of my experiences and the roles of the SES.
Collectively the Emergency Service community is one big family and regularly work alongside another in various operations. In many smaller towns of NSW a multi-agency response is needed simply to complete a task. In other situations the SES support the RFS with fire ground support, the RFS support the SES with storm damage operations, the SES support FRNSW at car accidents. Likewise the SES support Police with Land searches and the SES support ANSW with community first responder.. Quite often 2 or more agencies will participate in organised training activities where skills and techniques are honed for operational readiness.
