THE almost decade-long campaign to find a permanent home for its life-saving Latrobe Valley emergency vehicles has come to an end for the Morwell State Emergency Service.
The service’s road rescue truck moved into its new shed along Princes Drive on Friday after being based for eight years on the industrial lot of a generous local business.
The SES had previously housed its two Morwell-based vehicles at Ambulance Victoria’s site along McDonald Street.
But when Ambulance Victoria moved around the corner to Spry Street, there was no longer room for the SES road rescue truck.
“Latrobe Valley Installation said we could park our truck on their industrial yard for a while, well it turned out to be eight years,” Morwell unit controller Michael Vanderzalm said.
Mr Vanderzalm said the new shed would not only provide the truck with shelter from the elements, but halve response times.
“It took us eight minutes to respond from Centre Road, this will halve response times to four minutes,” he said.
“Four minutes could be life or death to a patient.”
Volunteers from the Morwell unit respond to 400 incidents a year and have attended 60 road crashes in the past 11 months.
The shed was constructed with $50,000 from the State Government, $25,000 from the Latrobe Valley Magistrates Court and $50,000 in public donations to the SES which took 40 years to raise.
“We’re a non-profit organisation, so every dollar that we get we normally spend and we have to beg and borrow for everything else… it’s been a long time in the making,” Mr Vanderzalm said.
A four-wheel-drive will also be moved to the new shed, after being temporarily housed at the Morwell SES training base at Latrobe Regional Airport.
There is another road rescue vehicle and a four-wheel-drive based at the Traralgon Ambulance Victoria building.
