Fire and Rescue NSW crew detail rescue near Kempsey

The rescue crew included senior firefighter Gavin Smith and leading firefighter Scott O'Shea.

Transcript

00:00I just want to ask about that technology as well because I guess you know maybe

00:05perhaps a decade ago when there wasn't drones around and navigation system

00:09that they are today do you think that this rescue would have been pulled off

00:13in the same way? I think we would have made it the drone definitely helped and

00:19it provided that sort of I think the security for the people that were

00:23rescuing once the lights came on that was something me and Gavin were both

00:25unaware of we had the capability to actually project lighting on us which

00:32was amazing it just made it a whole lot safer and we knew once that drone was in

00:36the sky that everything was going to be okay because it was it was touch and go

00:41there for a while I was talking to Gavin and we're both like you know comms could

00:46be an issue here we don't know exactly how far it is because we were just

00:50getting the information from Troy but yeah it made it and I'll be deploying it

00:55in future it's amazing our position was relayed back to our incident commander

00:59using the drones position our position our image was also being relayed back to

01:04him he could say who was there he could say how we were going and he could see how

01:07far we were so those technologies were very useful especially if you're traveling in

01:12pitch black at night time it was very dark in an area easy to be disorientated and the

01:18trip back was a lot longer because of the weight in the water yeah and like I do

01:22surf and I do ride a sup but I a bamboo raft and a sup a little bit different so

01:28half an hour trip out and it put roughly maybe two hours to return it was it was a

01:32long paddle cold yeah wow and in terms of I guess the like the makeshift raft I

01:39mean that's thinking under pressure to its finest yeah and how long did it take you

01:43to sort of piece that together and how did you know that it was going to work and be

01:46stable Troy had used it previously we just used a little bit extra rope to tie it to

01:53our vessel but after a while we realized it was more of an anchor with the extra

01:57weight so then we improvised again and I just said look I can stand up paddle surf

02:03how about I have a go and it was long enough and stable enough that I could

02:07maneuver it and we were confident then we're gonna make it so the priority was

02:14to get the people out safely we're in wetsuits and we knew yeah and the dogs

02:18obviously we will never all of us love dogs so we're never gonna leave the dogs

02:21behind yeah and they were only going to go with their owners so we realized then

02:26we had to switch it up we've got them off the raft and onto the boat so five

02:31adults six dogs and how are the dogs doing do you know if they are in good

02:37condition as well I know that Troy and the 32 year old would take them to

02:41hospital to for treatment but how the dogs going I believe the dogs were looked

02:45after at the showground at Kempsey I believe they were that's where they were

02:48going the dogs were in good condition when we left them and they were happy to see

02:52try