Wollongong firefighters to compete in Australasian Rescue Challenge 2023, Adelaide

I wasn't wearing a seatbelt, that's how I was "ejected" out of the car and onto the bitumen.

Luckily for me it's only a training scenario, designed to put firefighters' skills to the test for real-life vehicle accidents.

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Suddenly firefighters appear all around me. Some, the medics, are tasked to treat the injured - myself and a passenger (a mannequin we called Sarah, for the purpose of the exercise), while others cut us out of the vehicle.

"Can you hear me? What's your name? Where are you hurting?," Dapto senior firefighter Mark McMaster said as he looked down to me lying on the ground.

He continues: "What happened? What's the name of your friend?"

The team of six Illawarra firefighters has decades of experience between them, they work quickly and confidently as they assess me, Sarah and the car.

Lying on the ground amid loud bangs as twisted metal is cut away, is a lot more confronting than I thought it would be.

There's a lot of noise, movement, bangs, hisses (from the hydraulics pumps operating the rescue tools) and voices as commands are given.

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"Reassurance is probably as important as the treatment you're doing," Mr McMaster said.

As I lay on the ground he explains what's happening and why it's happening, and made sure I focused on that, rather than the confronting situation going on around me.

"It's very, very scary for people because they just don't know. There's a lot of loud noises, there's a lot of banging," he said.

You can flick through the photographs of the rescue training below:

Not only does training increase firies' skills, and therefore help locals involved in a car accident, it's their final training session before competing in the Australasian Rescue Challenge 2023 in Adelaide.

This crew of firefighters is no stranger to the competition, which kicks off on Friday, they've won it twice, been runner-up other times, and have also competed at world level - in Cape Town and Brazil.

Inspector Andrew Barber is leading the team at the championships where they'll be presented with three crash scenarios - car on its roof, on its side and on its wheels - along with trauma challenges. During each one, patients (mannequins) will have life-threatening injuries.

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Teams are judged on leadership, use of tools (such as jaws of life and hydraulic rams) and medical skills.

Put simply, the better trained crews are, the better chance you've got at a real-life serious crash.

Back to that training session. By now two firefighters have crawled inside the crumpled car and they're treating Sarah - she's on oxygen, has suspected spinal injuries and massive lacerations.

The car is cut away from around her, with shears (which act like scissors) slicing through metal like it's butter, and the roof is sawn away and removed so she can be stretchered out.

During 2021-22, Fire and Rescue NSW crews were called to more than 10,000 MVAs (motor vehicle accidents) across the state, this accounts for eight per cent of their total call outs.

MVAs range from simple bumps to serious life-altering, and sometimes life-ending, crashes and firefighters attend them all.

"On the worst day of their life, if they're caught in a bad car accident, they're [firefighters] going to be good, competent and skilled crews who turn up and extricate them in a fast, efficient manner and hopefully they get the best possible outcome," Insp Barber said.

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