Bendigo SES volunteers rescue elderly woman in floodwaters

Bendigo unit volunteers Braden Verity and Trent Ross were driving through Woodvale en route to a job just before 11pm on a Saturday night three weeks ago when they ran into floodwater that extended 300m down the road.

"It was one of those isolated rainfall events where it just smashed the area and moved on," Braden said. "There was water everywhere."

As the truck's headlights hit the water, Braden, who was driving, caught a glimpse of something white.

"Someone wearing white was in the water," he says.

After scoping the situation, Trent got out of the vehicle and walked in towards the figure - a woman in her 60s struggling to stand up in nearly waist-high floodwater.

"The creek had turned into a torrential river," Braden says. "Like something you see [in] white-water rafting. Where we found her it wasn't torrential but it was [running strongly] enough to stop her from walking.

"She was standing but as if she couldn't stand, bending over and collapsing a little.

"She'd become so exhausted she wouldn't have had the strength to stand up for much longer. She was on her last tiny ounce of adrenaline."

Braden drove the truck in closer and called an ambulance while Trent brought the woman about 100m back through the water to the vehicle, helping her into it.

Breathless and speaking between gasps, she told them her car had been swept into the gully and that she barely made it out.

She also said she had a heart condition.

The officers turned on the truck's heater to warm the rescuee up and were joined by an off-duty MICA-paramedic who happened to be nearby and was able to attend to her.

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When the officers went looking for the woman's car all they could find was a bit of the bumper, which had broken into bits.

"I don't know how she did it but somehow she'd got out of her vehicle and it's been swept some distance," Braden said.

"We searched 400m to 500m down and didn't find it."

The 14-year Bendigo SES veteran says despite the variety of jobs volunteers attend, it was unusual to actually save someone's life.

"It's probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing," Braden said. "It's just lucky we were there.

"When we found her we'd just passed an intersection where we could've turned and gone another way."

With the woman in the care of ambulance officers and a search for the missing vehicle abandoned, the officers continued on with their night's work.

"After that we went on to cut up a tree that was blocking the road," Braden said.

"We got home about 1am," said Trent, who did most of his volunteering "after the kids go to sleep".

A VICSES spokesperson said the organisation had responded to more than 800 flood rescues in a three-week period, many of them of people whose vehicles had become stranded in water.

The October 22 incident was "another important reminder to never drive through floodwater".

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