Paramedic in quake zone

A BERWICK paramedic has gone to New Zealand to lend a helping hand with the earthquake recovery operation.
Mick Carroll is one of four Ambulance Victoria Peer Support paramedics deployed to Christchurch on Friday to relieve the four Ambulance Victoria peers who were in Christchurch the week prior.
He joined Broadmeadows paramedics Tim Clancy, Lara paramedic Lynn Reeve and Camberwell paramedic Mark Watkinson. Together they will spend a week in Christchurch, each teamed up with a NZ peer support paramedic.
Ambulance Victoria peer support co-ordinator David Cooper spent the previous week in Christchurch and said there were many positive things he saw while helping with the recovery process.
“It is very heart-warming to witness all of the acts of kindness over here; people helping each other and asking how they are going; people place containers of water in soft drink bottles on the nature strip for people to take, others offer to allow people to have a shower, wash their hair etc,” Mr Cooper said.
“At the camp where the paramedics stay, we have people coming out to do massages, volunteers cooking the meals for more than 100 people each day, and even locals offering to do washing and bring back cleaned and ironed clothes.
“We saw a person stop his car and give a policeman on point duty a bottle of drink. Our NZ ambulance colleague wound down our car window and said ‘that’s a nice thing to do’, and received the reply, ‘what do you expect, you’re in Christchurch now’.”
Intensive care paramedic Paul Golz from Deer Park and Paul Rankin from the Air Ambulance are also part of the team which left Melbourne last week and will work on a 10-day rotation to relieve Australian Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) teams already in Christchurch. The USAR contingent also includes MFB, CFA, SES and an engineer.