Rare occurrence: Mick D’Elia and Adrian Race don’t often get to see each other outside of serious road accidents. They’re pleading with people to make their meetings less frequent.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
Death. Serious injury. Blood and glass spread across the road.
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Mick D’Elia has seen it all in his 20 years volunteering for Shepparton Search and Rescue.
Along with Tatura SES, Search and Rescue is the primary responders to floods, storms and — most frequently — road crashes.
They’re all volunteers.
“I don't think that for anybody it actually gets easier,” he said, softly.
Mr D’Elia was one of the half a dozen emergency service workers and volunteers who stood in front of the media at DECA in Shepparton on Wednesday, pleading with people to stay safe on the road after one of the region’s deadliest starts to a year in recent memory.
He pleaded with people to do everything they could to make call-outs for him and his volunteers as infrequent as possible.
“Be aware,” Mr D’Elia said.
“Think about what you're doing, put away all the distractions that you might have within your motor vehicle.
“A motor vehicle is a lethal weapon in the hands of somebody who’s not concentrating and isn't doing the right thing.”
The devastation isn’t limited to the scene of the crash, with lives ended or permanently changed as a result of serious collisions.
Coming together: Shepparton Search and Rescue president Nacole Standfield, Tatura SES’s Bec Gould and Shepparton Search and Rescue commander Mick D’Elia. Photo: Megan Fisher.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
“Being part of the community really does help you to understand just the really horrific trauma that sits in the community behind all of this stuff,” Mr D’Elia said.
“We really know that ripple-out effect that affects families, you know, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, mums, dads, all of that.
“We see the struggle that people have when people are critically injured and or they lose their lives on the road.”
Mr D’Elia, who on January 26 was named Shepparton’s Citizen of the Year, said being a first responder on the scene of a devastating road incident — such as the quadruple fatality at Pine Lodge in early January — was “absolute confusion”.
“You’ll find that there’s glass everywhere, there’s oil, there’s fluids from the motor vehicle, there’s a whole range of dangers like that — along with people who are confused or hurt,” he said.
“We try and work together to understand who needs to do what role and to what, what things need to be done, so that we can get the casualties into the hands of the health services in an efficient manner.”
Ambulance Victoria senior team manager for Greater Shepparton Adrian Pace echoed Mr D’Elia’s plea for people to be safe on the roads.
“Don’t meet us by accident,” he said, citing an old road safety ad.
“I think I'd rather see people arrive five or 10 minutes late than meet us,” Mr Pace said.
“We love helping people when we can, but we’d rather not see you on the side of the road.”
Mr Pace has been in the region for eight months, and has already seen more serious or deadly crashes in that time than in 10 years in Melbourne.
He said responding to a serious incident would see at least three or four ambulances making their way to the scene, with more heading to the even worse crashes.
That response drained an already-stressed health and emergency response system.
“So three or four ambulances going to one car accident is generally a norm,” Mr Pace said.
“That means there’s three or four ambulances not in the community to attend general medical emergencies that we would normally attend to, and then there’s a flow-on effect on GV Health.
“The additional resources to get quite unwell people to trauma hospitals in Melbourne is also dependent on other emergencies around the state.”
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