Meet the leader behind Ballarat's storm response

About 20 Ballarat SES volunteers responded to 280 calls for assistance on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with new calls still coming through on Monday as tree limbs continued to fall.

Extreme winds reached their peak between 5am and 6am on Friday in Ballarat, with gusts up to 100km/h, causing damage to rooftops and buildings and trees and tree limbs to fall.

Most calls for assistance related to trees on roads, trees on houses and roofs with missing or damaged tiles and cladding.

Managing the response from the Gillies Street headquarters was a team of six led by long-time volunteer Gordon Hicks who was appointed incident controller for the storm event on Friday morning.

After 30 years of volunteering with the SES, he said the weekend was memorable, as the role of incident controller was usually filled by a paid staff member for such a significant event.

Mr Hicks spoke to The Courier on Monday from the now empty room that was busy over the weekend as headquarters for the storm response.

He said he turned up to see how he could help, after originally going to work but deciding there was no point being there with the pager constantly going off.

He was given the role of incident controller.

Mr Hicks said he had held similar responsibilities in his time volunteering, but had never taken it on as an official role.

"I was fully qualified to do it, but I would have been just as happy going out on the truck or doing any other role. It wasn't as though I was thinking it was an extraordinary job I was coming to do," Mr Hicks said.

As incident controller, Mr Hicks ensured every job that came into his allotted response area, all 285 until midnight on Sunday, was attended to.

Incoming jobs were categorised by priority and location, using computer systems and a map with stickers on a whiteboard.

A television screen showed jobs coming up by location in real time.

Ballarat SES covers the area from Lal Lal to Clunes and Ballan to Beaufort.

He said crews from Gisborne, Ararat, Barwon West, Portland, Port Fairy and Bendigo travelled to assist Ballarat crews.

Ballarat SES worked with City of Ballarat, DELWP, CFA and VicPol in the response and Mr Hicks coordinated who responded to which jobs.

Mr Hicks said there was incredible teamwork, hard work and dedication.

"I am really proud of everyone," he said.

"I have helped train a lot of them. I have assessed a lot of them, I have been involved with bringing them in right at the start in some cases."

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Mr Hicks joined SES as a volunteer at age 17. His interest in the service grew from childhood when he would be driven past the SES shed on Gillies Street but his family did not know what the acronym meant.

Around the time he was thinking of joining, he was told SES volunteers had searched for a farmer who lived near his home town of Echuca. It turned out the farmer had Alzheimers and got lost on his farm.

The day he signed up he was sent to fix a skylight on the roof of a two-storey school building and he was hooked.

He met his wife through the SES while she was volunteering for another unit.

Within a few years of joining, Mr Hicks started to take on leadership roles and then began training others to step up.

Being an SES member has taken him around the country, responding to storms in Sydney and leading the Victorian rescue team in competitions in Perth, Adelaide and Hobart.

Mr Hicks is a member of the motorcycle search and rescue crew that can take him to beaches and places around the Grampians.

He has been on standby to respond to building collapses in Japan and New Zealand as part of the urban search and rescue group.

"I think a lot of us have that little core inside of us that just wants to be useful for others and this is a great opportunity to be able to develop that into something more," he said.

"It is hard being a volunteer, you have your own world and work. I have taken time off work to come here.

"The employers that allow that to happen are fantastic.

"They don't get any benefit immediately, but we can provide courses like first aid, health and safety, management and leadership courses that are nationally recognised."

Mr Hicks said volunteers played an important part in all forms of emergency responses.

"I think it is important that a percentage of volunteers are there, so that way it always finds the correct focus because there is nothing more pure than a volunteer's heart," he said.

"We are just ordinary people doing an extraordinary thing. We are no different to anyone else. It's just that we have the opportunity to do something."

Mr Hicks said Ballarat SES was one of the busier rural units in the state. Volunteers work on a roster, including day and night shifts, with one week on and two weeks off.

Mr Hicks said on average, crews might respond to four or five jobs a week. A busy few days after a storm has rolled through could see 40 to 50 calls for assistance, so 285 in three days was significant.

Mr Hicks said with Melbourne visitors now flocking to the regions, he feared there may be a need for search and rescue crews in places like Arapiles and Grampians.

A core group of 40 active members make up the Ballarat volunteer team, with 65 to 85 usually on the books.

Mr Hicks encouraged anyone considering becoming an SES volunteer to reach out.

"A lot of people say they have been thinking about it for years. That is probably a few years you really should just step up and have a go. If you are willing to do that you are probably going to fit in really well," he said.

In relation to Friday's storm event, he encouraged anyone who needed assistance to call 132 500 and warned people to be cautious of debris on the road and the possibility of tree limbs falling.

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