Portland residents are in good hands if they crash their car and need to be rescued.
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The Portland SES unit has moved into a new training yard that will allow crews to get more road crash rescue (RCR) training more often.
Lisa Sealy, from Portland SES, said members had moved six old, battered cars into the new training ground located in Portland’s industrial estate.
“As part of our RCR training we practice different scenarios, like attempting to safely remove someone that is trapped in a car that might have landed on its roof,” she said. “We cut the cars up with the jaws of life and practice getting people out of the vehicle safely.”
The old vehicles were donated by members of the community.
Mrs Sealy said the unit had been looking for a new training ground for about eight months.
“We had a car stored at a local yard but it wasn’t supposed to be a long term thing,” she said.
“It was really hard to find somewhere but (Portland SES member) Scott McFarlane put in a lot of effort to find a new place and so now we are here.
“It’s quite a big area where we can really spread out. It makes a bit of a mess when you cut up cars, but with a gravel and concrete yard it’s really easy to clean up.”
Mrs Sealy said the new training ground meant the unit could start putting more time into training.
“We have four members training for their RCR accreditation so we can really focus on that now,” she said.
“We’ve also got quite a few members going through their steep angle training as well as six new general rescue members.
“We have members that range from their late 60’s down to two junior members who have done their general rescue, but are waiting until they are 18 to go out on general call outs.
“Our numbers generally stays fairly consistent. People drop off due to work commitments or they move away, but we usually make the numbers back up fairly quickly with new members.”
Mrs Sealy said anyone interested in becoming a SES member, or donating an old car, should contact the Portland SES unit via their Facebook.
You can view some of the cars used in training below.