Red Cross
Weeeeell… I’ve been busy. Work etc and the other day I went to an Emergency Responders (Red Cross) meeting on Wednesday and it was interesting. It was the first ER meeting I’ve been to so I met some people who I hadn’t met before which was nerve wreaking in itself. Was contemplating for a while before hand “shall I go or not?” then at 6:45pm I decided to go so put on my shoes and jumped in the car and off I went to be there for 7pm.
It was interesting, and in parts, funny. Talking about the last emergency call out to the caravan park on the outskirts of the city I live in (which is only 10 mins or so from where I live), it was when we had very bad floods. The duty manager was just about to go to bed because she had a raging headache then her phone goes and it was the council asking her to gather up some people to assist with evacuating, providing shelter, food & drink and first aid etc. She phones around and gets the ER team together, two of the guys bought 400 bottles of water from up the valleys and some wise person took the tape off around the bottles – going around the first roundabout and they heard a loud bang, 400 bottles of water rolling around like skittles in the back of the van. hehe
We were then shown a DVD that was sent out to authorities such as police, fire, councils etc telling them about what we can do to assist in crisis. Then we were talking about CRB checks, new ID cards we’re meant to get and upcoming training courses. I’m going on a PES course (Providing Emotional Support) and Introduction to Major Incidents and Functioning in Centres.
I went to the first aid meet the day before and I’m going on a duty officer training course too. And I have to update my defib certificate, while we’re at it I’m updating all my first aid. It’s meant to be refreshed every 3 years (apart from defib which is meant to be updated yearly) but practice and updating when we can keeps it fresh in the head. And ohh…
While I remember. Hehe. I drove the battlebus!!! Well, the landrover ambulance. I drove it over the racecourse when I was providing first aid this last weekend. It was so fun!! The woman infront was hanging on for dear life but I was a good driver until we went over two bumps I didn’t see. The front of the landrover was literally flying through the air. The guy in the back who let me drive was in hysterics, the woman at the front who sat with me (also a first aider) said I gave her a hysterectomy. Our duty officer was handing out information cards to go in our first aid bags to give to casualties. The woman who sat in the front with me joked: “I’ll have one for shock and Peter should have one for head injuries”. Bwhaha.