NSW State Emergency Services (SES) led a multi-agency flood boat exercise on Saturday, designed to enhance flood rescue and flood support operations across the state, with the Marine Rescue Tuross Moruya Unit getting a chance to hone their skills. 

Called ‘Who Let the Boats Out,’ this training exercise is now in its fifth year and is the largest simultaneous boating exercise for NSW SES volunteers and NSW emergency service partners. 

Marine Rescue Tuross Moruya Unit Commander Blaise Madden said, “The exercise is a great opportunity to foster collaborative relationships with other agencies and increase response capability in real-life flood and storm events”.

Marine Rescue Tuross Moruya had two vessels participating in the exercise on the Moruya River: TU21 and MR25. Commander Madden said, “It’s crucial that our unit participates in this annual exercise to help refine our boating skills, evaluate our equipment and our custom designed multi-purpose vessel (MR25), to enable us to have the necessary skills to participate in statewide emergencies.”

Marine Rescue Tuross Moruya members got to practice manoeuvring, launching and docking vessels, search and rescue, recovering persons overboard, radio communications, fire drills and navigation.

More than 240 vessels and nine hundred participants from around the state took part, which included more than 2,200 individual taskings over a 4-hour period.

Following the recommendations of the 2022 NSW Flood Inquiry and funding from the NSW Government, Marine Rescue NSW has been building capability and capacity to support the NSW SES and other agencies during significant emergencies.