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State Emergency Service (SES) teams from across the country have converged on Sydney this weekend to test their rescue skills and learn new techniques from each other in a national competition.

Hosted by the NSW SES, this year’s Disaster Rescue Challenge put teams through their paces in different stations, including; mass casualty events, urban search and rescue scenes, confined space exercises, first aid and working from heights incidents.

Every mainland state and territory is represented at the three-day challenge, which involves more than 200 people and 12 different types of scenarios.

NSW SES Assistant Commissioner, Dean Storey ESM said the challenge was a great way to test skills and capabilities and learn new ways to tackle multiple rescue challenges.

“Interagency exercises like the Disaster Rescue Challenge are a great way for our experts to further enhance their capability to save lives and build safer communities if disaster strikes,” Assistant Commissioner Storey said.

“When our teams train and compete in events like this, they share best practice and learn how each agency works state-to-state so we can work better should we be deployed together in the future.”

Assistant Commissioner Storey said NSW SES Port Macquarie Unit won the NSW competition earlier this year to represent the Service at the national competition, and had been training weekly in the lead up to the event.

“It’s great to see our dedicated SES volunteers so passionate about not just possessing the skills to lead the response to storms, floods, and tsunamis, but also specialising in other critical rescue capabilities too,” Assistant Commissioner Storey said.

“Our volunteers are highly skilled in flood rescue, road crash rescue, land search and rescue, vertical rescue and urban search and rescue.”

The National Disaster Rescue challenge is held biennially and has been running since 1988.

This year teams from the following agencies competed: NSW SES Queensland SES Victoria SES Western Australia SES South Australia SES ACT SES

The Northern Territory SES had representatives attending to observe and learn.