ONE of the original members of Altona SES, Craig MacCallum well remembers the 1983 storm which lashed the suburb, downing dozens of trees and leaving one woman dead.
“Council called a public meeting to form an SES unit and . . . in the end there were 27 who signed up and started training,” the local unit controller said.
“Now, there’s five of us in the unit who are still originals. One of the big trees in Logan Reserve actually fell and crushed a car and killed a lady in the car.
“There were a lot of trees down. Because the council didn’t have anybody, there were SES units coming from Footscray and neighbouring SES units came into the town and cleaned up.”
The Altona unit now has about 35 members.
Victorians will today don the trademark orange overalls worn by SES volunteers for ‘Wear Orange Wednesday’. The event is part of National SES Week, which is an expression of thanks for the state’s 5500 SES volunteers.
In the past 12 months, SES members worked more than 146,000 hours and responded to more than 28,000 emergency calls statewide. “A lot of people don’t see us because we come of a night,” Mr MacCallum said. “People don’t realise that we are volunteers doing it in our own time. It’s certainly nice to be thanked by the community.”
Details: ses.vic.gov.au
