After twenty years of volunteering with the Volunteer Rescue Squad (VRA) Narromine squad leader Anthony McEachern says one particular day sticks out in his mind. 

“It was a hot day, we had already done two other rescues that day,” he told the Western Plains App. 

“It was a big accident involving a car and a truck. We had some varying accounts of what had happened. We didn’t know for sure what we were about to face, but when we got on the scene and it was absolutely catastrophic, there were a number of people dead.” 

But there were also a number of people who needed to be rescued that day and their lives were saved. 



“Whenever we visit a scene like that we always sit down afterwards and have a debrief. We talk about what happened, what we could have done better and how it affected us”. 

VRA Rescue NSW is made of specialist rescue operatives working for their communities in 58 locations around the state. 

The bulk of their work is rescuing people trapped in car crashes. 

The organisation gets some government funding, but it relies mainly on fundraising through the community. 

ABOVE: The Narromine Squad assisting paramedics. Image: VRA. 

VRA Narromine squad, which has 18 members, is currently calling on the community to show its support so it get upgrade equipment as well as purchase more hydraulic and vertical rescue gear. 

Squad vice-leader Graham Millgate first got involved in the VRA in 1985.

“I got involved after being leaving the workforce and I missed the close-knit teams we had the force, I found it in the VRA” he told the Western Plains App “It was also really important to me to make sure that people were being taken care of when they were in need.” 

He says that the gratitude he gets from people he has rescued is heart-warming. 

“If we didn’t have the VRA it would leave he big gap.  Narromine SES is very limited on numbers, so when someone needs rescuing its our volunteers that need to step in” 

McEachern says that if members of the community want to help they can hold a fundraising event such a barbecue or to go online and vote for them in Greater Bank Community Funding Program