PICTURE THIS: your car comes off the road, flips and lands on its roof, with you trapped in the wreckage.
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It's not a scenario anyone wants to find themselves in but, if it happens in Bendigo, members of a champion road rescue team may be racing your way.
The Bendigo SES road rescue crew has just earned the right to represent Victoria at July's Australasian Rescue Challenge in Dubbo after coming first in a Geelong competition over the weekend.
Miranda Brewer was the team's second medic, caring for injured patients and helping those ripping crumpled car metal away to help patients during the weekend's heats.
"You can have a car on its roof, a car on its side, cars into power poles. They (the scenarios) are based on real life examples that can and do occur on the road," she said.
The main difference was that in competition the crew had only 30 minutes to respond, team member Matt Pittock said.
"In a real trap you know you are dealing with someone's life, and there's a lot of adrenaline involved," he said.
He estimated had been to 40 car crashes during his two years volunteering with the SES, just over half of which had involved removing people trapped in vehicles.
Mr Pittock said competitions were no walk in the park.
"It's a lot of stress because people are watching every move you make and assessing what you are doing," he said.
The competition rescues were designed to be complex, with teams having to negotiate hazards like downed power lines, he said. Team members needed to be able to quickly assess situations and think ahead if they wanted to succeed.
The most important part of the competition was not winning, Ms Brewer said. It was the insights crew members gleaned from each scenario.
Related: SES Bendigo calls for volunteers
The six crew members wanted to pass on what they learned to the rest of the volunteers in Bendigo who responded to road rescues, Ms Brewer said.
The event in Dubbo she was most looking forward to was not the extrication challenge or the trauma challenge. It was the learning symposium.
The Australian Road Rescue Challenge takes place from 25 - 28 July. Teams from Bendigo and Bacchus Marsh, which came second in Geelong, will compete.
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