Episode 11 Emergency Rescue Down Under

They're the Brits who race to the rescue down under...

-RADIO:

-Multiple patients critical.

..everyday heroes, saving lives...

12 miles to run.

..battling fires...

It's too late!

It can be extremely dangerous.

..and fighting crime.

Put your arm down. Police! Open the door!

From the big city to the outback.

Our policing district is bigger than the whole of the UK.

From the bush...

He's been crushed between one of those dingo diggers and a Ute.

..to Bondi beach.

'The search continues for a British tourist who hasn't been seen

'since he went for a swim.'

You never quite know what you're in for or what's going to happen.

332, mate, on the head in.

Very high impact. He's really quite critically injured.

Brits on blue lights under blue skies.

Today down under, there's a major accident at the fairground.

There are apparently three patients that fell out of the Ferris wheel.

The British firefighters who risk their lives in the blazing bush.

There's a little old lady in that house next door to this.

We've just rescued two people in a house that's about to go over.

And new recruit Dr Rebecca is scrambled to save tiny twins.

They're quite young babies so things may go up and down.

We just arrived and the baby was working a lot harder to breathe

than we would've liked.

It's the weekend in Australia's biggest city

and there's a major rescue operation under way.

-REPORTER:

-Three teenage girls suffered various injuries including

pelvic fractures after a Ferris wheel accident at Liverpool.

They plunged up to five metres from their carriage

at the YMCA fun park.

British doctor Cliff Reid is one of Sydney's top trauma specialists

and he's been scrambled to the scene of the accident.

So the latest update from the inspector on scene are that three

patients fell out the Ferris wheel.

At least one of them has fractures.

Depending on at what point around the circle they were,

it could be a fall from a relatively low height or a significant height.

So injuries could range from minor to fatal.

Fire and Rescue Service have determined that the scene is

unsafe in terms of the stability or the security of the Ferris wheel

and there are multiple casualties on scene

so this may turn into a major incident.

The mission is clearly evolving

and the more information we can get at this stage the better.

But we'll try and be mentally prepared for everything.

Dr Cliff's job is to assess the patients and decide

whether to call in more emergency services.

A senior ambulance officer is already there.

My name's Cliff. I'm the doc and we've got Hugh there.

-It's a fall of four metres from this Ferris wheel.

-Four metres. OK.

It's actually tipped about four metres to one side and it's ejected

three girls approximately four

metres down to the ground and landing on a gate.

And there's two other patients that have been sighted.

-..minor injuries.

-OK.

-Erm, both stable.

-OK.

All right.

Hugh, do you want to have a quick eyeball of the other two

while I start here to make sure you're happy?

Family members are already at the scene.

I don't know. I wasn't here but

apparently out of that, the pink one there, which is

about three metres. Apparently it just flipped over and they fell out.

The girls are all friends, living locally.

The medics are concentrating on a 14-year-old girl with

a suspected fractured pelvis and arm.

Dr Cliff wants to check for internal bleeding.

It's just five minutes since he arrived on scene.

Now we're just using an ultrasound machine to look at your arm here.

OK, I'm just going to give this...

Now what I'm going to do is...

This little amount gets squeezed up your nose in a mist.

So when I say "now", just breathe in through your nose, OK?

You will start to feel it now. Breathe in through your nose.

Two of the girls are already on their way to hospital.

It's beginning to look like they were the lucky ones.

We had three patients. One appears to have a fractured pelvis,

humerus and some ribs on her left-hand side.

The other young girl has a fractured humerus, maybe some ribs, and

the other one has some flank pain, some leg pain, maybe a tib and fib.

-REPORTER:

-Police are investigating what caused a Ferris wheel

accident at Liverpool that injured three teenaged girls.

From our point of view, the structure looks sound.

It will be inspected by work cover inspectors when

they arrive later this afternoon and, um, we've instructed the

operators to keep it turned off and have no-one else use it,

not until it's inspected by the work cover operators.

Dr Cliff's patient is being taken

to the Westmead Children's Hospital in Sydney.

Clearly a horrible traumatic day for her.

But hopefully she's going to

pull through from this and do very well.

The worst-case scenario when you fall from that height is

multiple injuries which are life-threatening, potentially,

to the chest, the head, the pelvis and so on.

So you can bleed to death, you can die from a lack of oxygen

from chest injuries or you can die from a tremendous brain injury.

It's confirmed that, despite initial fears,

the girl hasn't broken her pelvis.

She makes a good recovery and returns home a few days later.

Experts can find no mechanical fault on the Ferris Wheel.

Every year, hundreds of British emergency workers

fly into Australia to begin new lives down under.

10,000 miles away in wintry Manchester, Dr Rebecca Barzeger

is about to become one of them.

She's a paediatrician, anxious to broaden her experience.

I think that's the scariest thing.

Like, I'm used to having a consultant on the end of a phone,

lots of nurses who are really skilled,

all the equipment I need, and suddenly, for me,

you're out there on your own,

you've got no-one around you but a nurse and a pilot and a child.

I've been in Manchester for 11 years.

I've got a network of doctors that

I know here really well that know how I work.

I've got my family and my friends

and I think I might even miss the rain a little bit, you know.

But, yeah, I think I'll mainly miss my family and friends.

It's a long, long way away. It's a big step.

It's seven weeks later, and this is Dr Rebecca's new home,

half a world away from the cloudy skies of Manchester.

I don't even know how many minutes old.

OK.

Dr Rebecca's leaving Sydney on a 250-mile journey to the country

town of Parkes, where newborn twins need her help.

The team from the 9pm last night are already there.

So we have to go and retrieve the second twin or whichever twin

they're not taking - cos they can't take two at once -

and make sure it's stable enough for transfer and have

an initial assessment of it and bring it back to a unit where

a baby of that gestation can be managed.

So currently we're driving to the airport to get the plane to

go there and then the ambulance will pick us up on the other side

and drive us to the hospital.

New South Wales operates a fleet of converted executive planes.

They're the ambulances of the outback.

This journey is so long it's like Dr Rebecca leaving her

hospital in Manchester and setting out to treat a patient in Aberdeen.

The team has all the kit to keep one of the babies alive long

enough to reach intensive care.

In the Parkes maternity unit, the twins are both in trouble,

their tiny lungs struggling to cope.

They're both going to the same place

so we'll all end up in the same place at the end, OK?

Their parents, Amanda and Matt, are nearby.

So if you've got questions in that time, just ask us

or ask the other staff.

Don't feel like you're in the way, cos, you know...

they're your babies.

Soon there's an update from British intensive care nurse

Steve Face, who's been trying to stabilise

the condition of one of the twins since the early hours.

At the moment, she's reasonably stable.

But they're quite young babies,

so we're going to have a few days where things may go up and down.

But at the moment she's probably doing as well as we would hope.

Steve's baby is the first to leave, cocooned in a mobile incubator.

Next, Rebecca's baby is prepared for her flight.

How are we doing with her tube?

-We're not overly confident with that line.

-Fine.

But I guess that you're going to be shoving a new one in there.

-Yeah, it looks kind of flimsy, doesn't it?

-Yeah.

It's very difficult. I am just not convinced.

-Now that's frothing.

-Is it?

-Yep.

-So it's positional to here.

Premature babies need delicate care.

Not enough oxygen and they can suffer brain damage,

too much and they can be left blind.

Rebecca has decided to anaesthetise her baby

and take over her breathing.

Yeah, a 240 and a 120.

Once the tube is in, there's an immediate improvement.

We just arrived and the baby was working a lot harder to

breathe than we would've liked, so we decided to put

a tube down straightaway and she looks a bit more relieved

now that that tube is in and we're breathing for her, essentially.

So now we're just going to pop an extra drip in.

She's a lovely colour and she is vigorous, active. I think

she just wasn't quite ready to breathe for herself yet, so...

But she's not out of the woods yet. There's a 200 mile flight ahead.

-REPORTER:

-We woke to the horrible news yesterday that we

believed four had perished in the fires still going.

It's the beginning of the Aussie summer,

when the baking sun brings bushfire season

to the forests of New South Wales.

And when the flames arrive, former Royal Marine Tony Wood

is in the front line.

You've got smoke. You're on a fire so smoke is everywhere.

These bushfires are huge.

Now! Water on.

Australia spends millions fighting the fires from the skies,

bombing the flames with a fleet of helicopters and planes.

It can be extremely dangerous

and when you're fighting the fires you can feel the heat.

This is what Tony is fighting.

We're going to use a hose over here. We're going to do both these houses.

We're going to save both of them.

In the tinder-dry trees of the Australian bush...

Hey, hey, hey, hey! You cannot go out.

You cannot go out now. It's too late.

..no home is immune...

..no road safe.

Close the door.

This is the terrifying reality of fighting fires that can

travel at 20mph.

Away from the cities, the men and women risking their lives

are all volunteers from the Rural Fire Service.

Think about what you're going to be doing.

I'll be telling you what the incident is.

Normally, a crew leader will be telling you to get a, b, c,

and d off the truck. I'm looking, really,

or they'll be looking for you to do that yourselves.

So think of all the basic stuff.

Simon Jones gave up commuting to London for a life down under

and now he helps run his local brigade in a suburb of Sydney.

He's out of the car. He's at the front.

We get to do some stuff that I would never have expected to do in the UK.

I needed things to do or something else to do on a weekend

and found more than enough to do by

exploring the Rural Fire Service, so...

Get in low.

A lot of the whole volunteer spirit in Australia

comes from the fact that it's a harsh land, you know?

And when you arrived here 200 years ago, I needed your help

and you needed my help and I think that's

really where this whole spirit of volunteering comes from

is that, you know, we need each other's help to get by.

I mean, the Rural Fire Service has something like 72,000 members,

and that's just in New South Wales.

Up here, guys! Quickly, quickly, quickly!

-REPORTER:

-Some of the worst that we've seen in this state.

And that's right, the worst in 50 years.

But nothing compares to what's happening down there.

The sort of area that they're saying that's wiped out.

Some of the rural firefighters

are trained to drop into bushfire zones from helicopters,

and crewman Tony must find a way of getting them near the flames safely.

Fires are in the most inaccessible places.

You cannot, cannot get to it to vehicles.

Hence we've got a large percentage of the helicopters

are winch capable.

Sometimes for these volunteers it's the first operational winch they do.

You know, their eyes are like that

when you're bringing them

and they don't want to go to the door.

Hook them on, bring them there...

I'll bring them there and we'll do three checks, I'll take them out.

I'll put their equipment

and they'll always have a day pack with them.

They have the final thumbs up and then I winch them down.

And the chopper is also equipped to help them fight the fire from above.

See we've got the Bell 412.

This is one of three helicopters being brought over from Canada

this year to fight the summer season.

We'll probably carry 12 people at a time.

It's fitted both with the underfloor tank or indeed

we can put a Bambi Bucket on it.

The tank itself can contain up to 1,400 litres of water.

You can see it's a fairly decent-sized tank.

So that's a fair amount of water to drop on any fire.

There's four different compartments under there.

They can either open up and just drop the lot or

they can open up one at a time and drop it

so they can cover a larger distance across the ground.

When we get over the water source that we're going to use, the pilot

will hit the switch and he will drop this. This will just hang down.

Put it into the water, hover it into the water, this fills that up

within 30 to 40 seconds, which is pretty cool. That's pretty fast.

Fills it up, off we go and then we can drop it on it.

Our primary role is to protect lives and people's houses.

That's what we're there for.

There's a little old lady in that house next door, guys.

-Which one is it, that one?

-I'll go straight back in for her.

Two years ago, huge blazes that swept the Blue Mountains

left many people homeless.

Hello, hello? We need you out now.

I know, I know I'm getting...

No, no, we need you now.

This year, it's feared it could happen again.

Henry 5. I'm just rescuing some

gear from a house that's about to go over.

Today, Simon's out advising homeowners on how to

protect their property against wildfire.

Once you get out of metro areas like Sydney, the RFS is what you've got.

There is no New South Wales Fire and Rescue.

So the RFS fulfils those functions.

This area will be especially vulnerable now summer is here.

Yeah, it's a lovely little spot for embers, you know,

sort of popping in through here and...

-But if you are here and you can damp it down, that's a...

-Yeah.

But again, having a hosepipe that runs all the way round.

The number of houses that interface onto bushland

means that we have a high probability that at some point,

you know, those houses might be impacted by bushfire.

I suppose one similarity between Australians

and British people is talking about the weather.

So we spend a lot of time talking about the weather.

But here whether can be fire weather.

And when the forecast is for danger in the bush this summer, there'll

be no shortage of Brits like Simon ready to take on the flames.

Fuelled by the booming mining industry

and a huge influx of migrants from the UK and South Africa, Perth

is one of the world's most expensive cities in which to live.

Most homes boast a pool,

many have a view of the Indian Ocean,

and today they're all under the watchful eyes of British

police officers Colin and Kate.

This is Quinns Rocks and it's one of our suburbs.

So we do Mundaring and the Quinns Rocks.

It's quite an affluent suburb.

Yeah, in areas.

There's the newer part. You've got your mix of extremely

old houses and brand-new, two-storey,

million dollar plus houses.

But behind the tidy gardens and tinted windows of these

housing estates is a less attractive side to Aussie life.

Drug use is a growing problem and the British officers'

instinct for lawbreakers has just sniffed out a couple of suspects.

Hello.

-Hi. How you doing?

-Good, thank you.

Can you guess why we've pulled you over?

-Maybe the look of the car?

-Nah.

The driver of the car was stopped for a licence irregularity,

but Colin's questioning soon sets him off on another track.

I was just speaking to him,

obviously, and I know that I'm going

to search him and when I asked him if he has anything on him that

he shouldn't have then he says that he thinks that he might do and

there might be items in the vehicle that shouldn't be there as well.

Can I just get you to jump out for me? Just come over there.

Jump over here, all right? Do you consent to the search?

-Yeah, yeah, no worries.

-All right. Just to let you know,

if you do withdraw your consent at any time, it is an offence to do so.

You may be arrested and the consent

-will be done against your will, all right?

-OK.

So have you anything on you that you shouldn't have?

All right. If you want to just turn out your pocket for me.

Yeah. And that should be it, mate, yeah.

That's about it? All right.

-So I'm just going to pop it over here.

-Yeah.

All right?

The pipe is the sort used to smoke crystal meth - the drug that's

becoming the narcotic of choice for users in Western Australia.

Put your arms up by your side.

Kate's talking to his passenger. She insists she's innocent.

Before I go any further, I'm going to give you the caution.

You're not obliged to say anything unless you wish you do so.

Whatever you do say will be taken down in writing

and may be given in evidence and used against you in court.

Do you understand that?

High-level crystal meth dealers have been sentenced to ten years in jail,

but cases of low-level possession are so common

this man won't even be arrested.

I've just got your details here and the fact that I told you,

you'd be summonsed for the offence, all right?

The driver's going to end up in court.

His driving licence has also expired,

meaning he'll face a motoring charge.

Do I have to push it home?

-You don't have to push it but...

-We'll...we'll follow you.

They're going to let him drive home, but no further.

-So we'll follow you back there.

-Thank you.

So you can get it home.

Methamphetamine is probably our biggest problem over here

when it comes to drugs.

Before I came to Australia, I don't even think I'd heard of meth.

But it... Now it's just... It's just taken over.

Cos it's so easy to cook and you can do it anywhere with items

that most households will have,

there's so many people just taking up to cooking their own meth.

And I think it's just so addictive.

One or two hits of it and then they're just craving more

and more and more.

So the kids will go from cannabis to meth quite quickly,

which is obviously a huge problem.

In rural New South Wales, flying doctor Rebecca Barzeger is

preparing her tiny patient for a life-saving flight.

This baby weighs less than a bag of sugar

and getting a drip in is proving difficult.

No wonder we've struggled.

But it's so small. Do you see what I mean?

Or I might be able to go above here.

Above where they've gone.

But I think we'll struggle to get gasses off it.

If we...

Yeah, I can see it trying to come out here.

I'm trying to keep this moving.

Just forget the lactate, if that helps.

The needle must go in before the baby can fly as she may need drugs

during the journey to the intensive care unit.

It was like Christmas when that cannula went in.

So we have a good sugar. A good gas.

Two cannulas. Happy with our tube position.

Can I give you that one?

Yes. Thank you.

At last, after two hours of preparation,

the second twin is ready to leave the unit where she was born.

Ooh, there's just a bit of tension on the ventilator.

Yeah, there we go.

One, two, three, lift. Right.

Bed away and we'll slowly walk.

I think we'll need to sit her in the incubator for about 20 minutes

just to make sure that she's happy.

But other than that she's got sedation running,

she's got nice fluids running, her blood sugar's OK.

Her blood gasses are OK. So she's doing pretty well.

It's less than 24 hours since the twins' mum Amanda gave birth.

Now she faces her first ever flight.

Just need to get going, I think. That's the big thing.

And hope that the plane doesn't jiggle too much

because she doesn't like being jiggled around too much.

When the ambulance was jiggling she showed us that she was annoyed.

The pilot's been asked to fly as low as is safe to reduce

the strain on his baby passenger's lungs.

It's the distance that's the big thing.

Like, in the UK, you'll go 30 miles and that's your distance.

Here, you're going 80, 90, 100.

Three legs of the journey, ambulances to airports

to two-hour flights sometimes, and it's a really long, long day.

She's flown really well. No major catastrophes.

So, yeah, she's been really good, actually.

So mum's bag.

Brilliant, Mum, have you seen...? We're just going to take baby away

and we'll see you there really shortly.

Yeah, all right.

All right, safe journey over.

The last leg of the journey takes their patient

to the special care baby unit in the town of Nepean.

Premature babies are so unpredictable and especially

when they've been twins as well.

Both of these babies have needed a bit of support

with their breathing and things, so we're not out the woods as such.

But so far, so good.

Both babies and their mum are now in the best possible place.

Rebecca's job is almost over.

When we got there, it was clear that she needed a little bit more

support from us and that's kind of a hairy moment where

you need to help it breathe a little bit better so we actually

made the decision to put a tube down the throat and into the lung area.

Into the breathing tube and breathe for the baby and that can

always be a little bit stressful cos it's a high-risk procedure.

But once that was in and that was sorted, the baby was very

well behaved, tolerated the flight.

Didn't have any major catastrophes.

So, yeah, she did well, I think.

The twins spend two weeks in hospital before being allowed

to fly home to the remote town of Parkes with their proud mum.

In a country where a four-hour drive to the supermarket isn't

unusual, the police take driving offences very seriously.

British officers Colin Todd

and Kate Mann are nearing the end of their shift.

Today we are just patrolling the local area,

seeing what's going on, just seeing what jobs are in the area,

what jobs are active, and then if anything pops up

and it's worth patrolling,

we'll just scan in the licence plates and see

if we can get anything off the cars that are driving around in the area.

1,000 Aussies die every year on the roads,

a casualty rate that's around 50% higher than the UK,

and one driver has just caught Colin's attention.

This car's registered to a company.

So the car comes back all right but we don't know who's driving.

Its driver is about to face a friendly grilling.

-The car's registered to a company.

-Ah, yeah.

-So we just need to know who's driving, that's all.

-Um, yeah.

-Have you got anything in the vehicle that you shouldn't have?

-No.

-No drugs, nothing like that?

-No.

-Have you got anything?

-No!

Um, what we're going to do is we'll just search the car to make

-sure you haven't got anything in there.

-Yeah.

-Are you all right for us to do that?

-Yeah. Um, yeah.

-What I'll get you to do is I'll get you to turn the engine off.

-Yeah.

I'll get you guys just to step out on the side.

Just step off the road so we're not...

Have you got any ID on you?

Yeah, I do.

Awesome.

-In a minute, I'll let Colin give you guys a quick pat down.

-Yeah.

Cos obviously I don't want to do that cos I'm a girl.

Right just to let you know it's an

-offence not to consent, all right?

-Yeah, sure.

And if you withdraw your consent at any time it'll be done anyway.

Yeah.

Thanks to the onboard computer, the police even know the

passenger's nickname, the result of a brief career as a graffiti artist.

You don't do it any more?

Not after what I had to do when I got caught.

What'd you have to do?

Like, 150 hours community service.

What sort of thing did you have to do?

Um, I went... Had to clean off graffiti.

Did they make you clean your own graffiti off?

Uh, no it was just heaps of other stuff,

cos all my stuff already got taken off.

The vehicle and passenger are clean, and so is the driver.

Sadly, his licence isn't.

Your licence is actually fine-suspended.

-Just phone them up, that's the number.

-Yeah, sure.

-Cos you're not allowed to drive from here.

-No.

-You got a licence?

-Brett doesn't have a licence, no.

-No?

-I wish.

-So just phone them up. There's yours.

-Thank you.

-Just phone them up, quote that number.

-Yeah.

And see if you can pay it right now. Awesome.

Awesome, yeah, cheers. OK, thanks for me letting me know about that.

No dramas.

If Aussies fail to pay traffic fines, their licences are suspended

and so this is the end of the driver's journey.

We've advised him that he can no longer drive

until he pays his suspension.

And we'll put an alert on the system so that

if he gets stopped again and he hasn't done it he will then

be summonsed for the offence of driving while being suspended.

It's going to be a walk home for both men

unless they can find another driver.

And for Kate and Colin, it's back on patrol on another night shift,

keeping their adopted city safe.