SES volunteer warns of the dangers of texting and driving

Meander Valley State Emergency Service (SES) Deputy Unit Manager and leading firefigher with the Deloraine Fire Brigade Andrew Sherriff has been doing it for two decades.

He’s seen a lot in his time, including phones in cars with half-typed text messages on them at fatal crashes.

Mr Sherriff has been with the Fire Service for 20 years, and the SES for 18 years, responding to car fires, structural fires, grass fires, car crashes, floods and more.

“The SES is a bit more hands on than the fire brigade at car accidents. You’re dealing with patients, dealing with blood. You’re in the thick of it a bit more.

“You never know what to expect when you’re called out to a job. You’re going into the unknown.

“Because I’m from the area, it’s always a worry when called to a local accident that it will be someone I know.

“I used to live just down the road from the station here and I’ve been called out to accidents on the road when my wife has been travelling. You just hold your breath until you get there.

“Being a small area, it’s generally someone you know. If it’s the highway, it could be anyone, but when you’re talking about the back roads of Deloraine – when you grow up in a community where your wife and your family have grown up, you sort of know everyone in the area.

“Generally, on those country roads, it’s always someone you know. You might not have much of an association with them, but you know of them or you know their parents, or their brother.”

Mr Sherriff has had to respond to fatalities where he has known the victims.

“They’re the ones you think about – you can’t just go to sleep. I had to identify a guy once who I’d been talking to four hours ago on the street.”

But Mr Sherriff said he was lucky because he had never had a lot of trouble dealing with the traumatic things he sees as an SES volunteer.

He believes one of the reasons he is able to deal mentally with what he sees is because he talks about it. “It’s the best way of dealing with it.

“You need to talk and get it out.

“It’s one of those things though that you could go to 100 of them and not have any trouble, but then you might go to one and it could just knock you for six.

“It’s not a normal thing to see dead bodies, and I’ve seen a lot of people who have really struggled with it. It’s a normal reaction to struggle.

“Even though I’ve always been okay with it, I know that I might go to an accident one day and there might be a child that looks like mine, or is the same age, and it might finish it for me.”

After every fatal crash the SES responds to, counsellors from an organisation called Critical Incident Stress Management calls the volunteers to talk to them about it.

“I think that’s important for some of the volunteers and helps them.

“You’d never forget a fatal, even after 20 years I remember them all. I remember the first one I went to the most.”

Mr Sherriff said it made him “crabby” when he saw people texting or looking at their phone while driving.

There were 38 deaths on Tasmanian roads in 2016 – five more than the previous year, while 279 people were seriously injured.

And during the festive season, from December 23 to January 1, Tasmania Police issued 42 infringement notices to Tasmanians for using mobile phones while driving.

“It only takes a second to cross the white line. It makes you crabby when you see people on phones driving,” Mr Sherriff said.

“We’ve found phones in cars with half-typed messages at fatals.

“I try to look people in the eye when driving past them, and, even on the highway, I see people looking down at their phones.

“People would probably be lying if they said they’d never done it, but if you keep doing it, you’ll crash. It won’t necessarily happen soon, but it will happen.”

The SES is a voluntary organisation, with units across Australia that respond to severe storms and floods, road crashes, search, rescue and recovery, as well as a range of other general rescue operations. 

The Tasmanian branch was established in 1976, and today has 35 volunteer units and around 550 volunteers across the state.