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.
The SES receives thousands of requests each year and these need to be stored in some form of data management system. For many years the SES used an outdated data tracking system called RFA (Request for Assistance). Jobs would be logged and actioned, teams created and reports run often in between untimely synchronisations that slowed the system. Recently the SES has implemented a new data management system called “Beacon”. This web based system sees the SES move back into the 21st century with job recording. We now have the ability to communicate directly with other E.S in the area of tasking.
