Options 1 - Search & Rescue - Jema Roozendaal

The past 3 days of our Search and Rescue option have been wild to say the least. Each day started with wakeup and breakfast at the hotel. And then another breakfast given to us by the Magen team at Search and Rescue. No, we did not eat less at the first breakfast and we also still wonder if the Magen team knew we had a buffet breakfast 20 minutes before they fed us an entire bakery.

The days began with safety demonstrations basically telling us to not do anything stupid and get injured while we were handling dangerous machinery. The leaders who were teaching and helping us were amazing professional people, experienced in searching and rescuing in dangerous situations. They had an abundance of knowledge to pass on and many skills that saved us when we realised we were stuck in holes with no way out.

The main purpose of our 3 days was to progress through the skills of searching and rescuing including CPR, jack-hammering, sawing, iron clipping, moving heavy stones and problem solving which would eventually lead us to the final day where we would rescue dummies and then each other from underneath 3 story disaster buildings using a variety of mechanisms. Working as a cohesive team, void of any instructor’s help, using powerful machinery which we would almost never get our hands on in Australia, was simply wicked. We also worked with search dogs who were able to find people under mountains of rubble and alert the rescue team by barking.

At the end of the course we were all awarded certificates in basic search and rescue training, which will most certainly be embellished and then added to our resumes, and even better we were each given a bright orange Magen T-shirt. So if an earthquake hits Sydney and you see a bunch of teenagers running around in orange shirts, shout some encouragement, they might just save your city.

Jema Roozendaal - 11.12.2019