OceanaGold Waihi Mines Rescue spend a day at the beach
The OceanaGold Waihi Mines Rescue Team is used to being called upon by local Emergency Services. Their skills in vertical rescue at height and depth, combined with their fitness, training and specialist equipment mean their assistance is highly valued in the community as well as on site.
Over recent years the team has extracted a casualty with a broken leg who was trapped by large seas at the Bowentown Heads, rescued a kayaker from the base of a cliff in heavy seas, extricated a dog from a precarious ledge on a Bowentown cliff face, and assisted with Search and Rescue operations.
Over recent years the team has extracted a casualty with a broken leg who was trapped by large seas at the Bowentown Heads, rescued a kayaker from the base of a cliff in heavy seas, extricated a dog from a precarious ledge on a Bowentown cliff face, and assisted with Search and Rescue operations.
Safety Advisor Dave Oliver sums it up. ‘We have equipment and expertise that civilian services do not have, so it makes sense to help where we can. As a whole team, we’re available 24 hours a day for incidents on site, but our local and regional rescue services also know we are also available around the clock with our specialised skills and equipment to back them up at any time.’
There is one part of Mines Rescue training that the public is not likely to see, and that is donning the BG4 self-contained breathing set that is used if team members have to operate in an ‘irrespirable atmosphere’. This was on show recently, however, as new recruits went through their training, part of which includes carrying a patient up a local lookout at the beach in the full summer sun while wearing breathing apparatus. |
Dave explains the philosophy behind this activity. ‘We say ‘Train hard, fight easy.’ We get everything thrown at us during training, so if we are ever faced with a real emergency it will be less demanding than our training ever was.’