Marine Rescue NSW enhances statewide flood support capability
Marine Rescue NSW has delivered three new multi-purpose vessels to units in the Illawarra and South Coast.
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00:00So when SES have a requirement for search capacity or any other operational response requirement in relation to flood, they'll contact Marine Rescue
00:07and
00:08we will assemble the required number of crews and vessels and supporting assets and send them out wherever they may be required.
00:15They can be responded locally or they can go right up north to Lismore, right down south down through to Eadie
00:21or further afield west out to Deniliquin even as far as Broken Hill. Across Marine Rescue New South Wales
00:27we're currently sitting at 100 members that are fully endorsed and able to deploy and in the south zone here
00:31we have currently 26 with a further 40 that are still undergoing training.
00:38These boats will be out on the lake and in the Shoalhaven River and out at Churros as well.
00:43They're out there just doing business as usual, doing patrols
00:45but the shallow draft on these vessels means that they can get into areas that our other vessels normally couldn't.
00:52Yet the assets will be used every day
00:54any time that we're requested to go out and assist somebody
00:57these vessels will be tasked to go out there should they be the appropriate vessel for the job.
01:04The training that we give the volunteers is quite comprehensive.
01:07It needs to be to make sure that we're operating in a safe environment
01:09for them and also for the members of the public that we're going out to.
01:13So in saying that we do everything that we can to make sure that the induction is thorough and
01:20they understand fully how the vessels operate and also how they
01:24how they manoeuvre because quite often it's the close quarters manoeuvring that's the difficult thing to master.
01:30Now the Sentinel vessels, what's special about them?
01:33They're different from what we've traditionally built. So these are a plastic HTPE hull. It's a very thick plastic they
01:42are pretty much unbreakable, recyclable
01:44they're a
01:46something that's going to be probably a change to to how we look at building boats in the future for different circumstances
01:53but great solid hull. Six metres, they're all six metres long.
01:57Bow door
01:58we've worked with one, two, three
02:00naval architects to look at design of the hull and the shape of the vessel to best suit our requirements.
02:06Yeah, bit of Suzuki. So these are powered by twin Suzuki 90 horsepower engines
02:11so they'll have a top speed of about 38 to 40 knots, but really comfortable cruising around that 20 mark
02:17which is all we need for, you know, getting into those remote areas and isolated places.
02:22And when you say remote areas, isolated places, floodwaters unpredictable
02:26just how shallow of water can these vessels travel in? So the draft in these is only 0.3
02:32so it's very shallow, obviously constrained of what you're going to be able to drive with your outboards
02:37but so shallow you can get into those areas we've never been able to access before.
02:43The utility capability of this vessel allows us to
02:48carry multiple things. So whether it's restocking remote communities, whether it's
02:53evacuating large groups of people
02:57livestock
02:58you know
02:59feed for livestock, all those sorts of things.
03:02We've got plenty of space on the deck that we can actually load up and
03:07transport quite simply.