By Mikayla van Loon
Some long serving members of the Lilydale SES received national recognition last month for their involvement and dedication to the emergency response unit.
VICSES Operations Manager Di Batley had the honour of presenting two medals, alongside three plaques to the unit on 27 March.
Deputy Controller – Administration Jacob Krul received the 2019/20 Bushfires Clasp for the National Emergency Medal while Team Leader Lester Gibson was presented with the National Medal for Service.
Unit controller Shaun Caulfield said for both members to be acknowledged for their commitment and service to not only the unit but to external events, like the Black Summer bushfires was an incredible feat.
“It’s fantastic to see our honours and awards system being used to appropriately recognise people who put in a significant period of service,” he said.
Having received the National Emergency Medal for the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, Mr Krul was essentially re-awarded for offering more than seven days service yet again during the 2019/20 bushfires.
“The clasp is awarded when someone already has a medal or an award and then essentially earned it a second time for another activity,” Mr Caulfield said.
“There’s only two other events for which the National Emergency Medal has been awarded, which was Cyclone Yasi and the 2009 bushfires in Victoria.”
During that service, Mr Krul and other members of the Lilydale unit supported the Gippsland crew in the operational side of managing the bushfire to allow firefighters to do their job.
“Some of the time he spent as a standby road rescue crew in parts of Gippsland. There’s a unit in Gippsland but a lot of the members worked for what was DELWP at the time,” Mr Caulfield said.
“They were heavily engaged in firefighting activities. So that unit had issues with having road rescue qualified crew. So he went as part of the team as well as supporting logistics and operation support.”
Given the events where the National Service Medal could be awarded were over 10 years apart, Mr Caulfield said it is fairly rare for someone to be a recipient of both.
“It would mean someone would have to have been around for more than 10 years to do that. The qualifying criteria for both events was the same, which is seven days in total of aggregate time spent at the actual event.
“There would be others who would be in the same boat but it wouldn’t be hundreds because it’s just so far apart.
“So it’s great to be able to recognise someone for that level of commitment and availability to go off and willingness to go and assist in other areas.”
As for Mr Gibson, he received the National Medal for Service because of his over 15 years of active service to an emergency response organisation where someone’s personal safety is at risk.
“It’s for being actively involved and engaged and participating in the betterment of the service,” Mr Caulfield said.
“Lester’s up to nearly 19 years now [of service]. It’s a significant contribution and amount of dedication to the community to continue to be engaged in these activities for such a period of time.”
Mr Caulfield said because of Mr Gibson’s long standing involvement in the SES, he is “highly valuable” as he is now able to pass on his knowledge to others.
“As you do things over an extended period of time you do gain a lot of knowledge and expertise in that and Lester’s great at passing key knowledge on to others.
“He’s actively involved in training the younger members so that he gets to pass that knowledge that he’s built up over such a long period of time on to the next generation.”
Although it didn’t come as a surprise, Lilydale SES was also presented with three plaques for responding to a higher than normal call out rate of above 2000 requests for assistance from 2019 to 2021.
“In that period of time, being the third busiest unit in the state was not really much of a surprise to us, we knew that we’ve been pretty busy and it was certainly way above our average of around 800 to 1000 requests a year.
“It’s a testament to our members who are there to do those jobs but also the support we get from the broader SES community and emergency services because we couldn’t do that volume of work without our neighbouring units and those from even faraway places.”
Having held a volunteer information session on Wednesday 5 April, Mr Caulfield said there is still time for volunteers to sign up for the middle of the year intake.
To enquire, go to the Lilydale State Emergency Service Facebook page, apply via www.lilydalesesrescue.com.au/volunteer/ or send an email to enquiries@lilydalesesrescue.com.au
