Last Saturday was a busy day for Rivers SES Unit.  We started off at the “Charny Carny” at midday, where we engaged and educated the local community about the SES and what we do; and moved straight on to Skyfire at 1600h, where we were tasked with providing support to the ACT Ambulance Service to the expected crowd of approximately 130,000 people, as were St John Ambulance and the other ACTSES Units. 

 

It was a perfect day last Saturday for a large-scale, outdoor even in the ACT.  At 4pm it was a still, sunny, warm 28°C (82.4°F) down by Lake Burley Griffin.  Even as the SES arrived on-site at the Unified Forward Command Post (UFCP) at 4pm, some two hours before the scheduled start of Skyfire, there was already a large crowd beginning to form around the central basin of Lake Burley Griffin (the man-made lake that dominates the middle of Canberra). There was no shortage of people, picnic blankets, food or soft drink down by the lake foreshore and alcohol had apparently been flowing for a while for quite a few punters when we got there. 

 

The event started off innocuously enough, with few incidents or troubles.  There were reports of the odd minor injury; burns, scrapes and blisters and one or two more serious problems, but on the whole it was fairly sedate.

 

It was after Skyfire that things really started to heat up and it got very busy for the ACT Ambulance Service and its support elements.  Cases came in a rush.  There were multiple incidents of the classic ‘pissed and fell over’ incidents and in one case a ‘pissed, climbed a tree, fell out of it and smashed my ankle’ scenario that was rapidly responded to by four ambulance crews and an ACT Fire Brigade pumper (aka big yellow truck).  There were some very sick and untidy teenagers who ended up in either the first aid tents or the police command post, who were obviously very, very drunk but obviously not used to drinking.  They looked tragic and try-hard to me.

 

We ended up packing up the first aid tents and the command post at about 11pm, but the party was still raging on by the lake’s side and the poor ole ambos were apparently still picking up after Skyfire at 4am the next day.