Great Southern community to wear orange on May 21 in support of local State Emergency Service volunteers

The Great Southern community is being encouraged to wear orange on May 21 for Wear Orange Wednesday to show appreciation for local State Emergency Service volunteers.

Department of Fire and Emergency Services Great Southern Supt Wayne Green said the day recognises the “great work” of SES volunteers.

“Not only them as volunteers, the commitments their families make when they support volunteers when they go out usually in adverse conditions to help the community out,” he said.

SES volunteers attended 233 incidents across the region over 2021 hours between May 1, 2024, and May 6, 2025, including 54 severe weather events, 20 large bushfires, 19 rescues and patient lifts, and 26 road crash rescues.

The volunteers’ skills vary from rappelling off cliffs to rescue people to securing roofs in bad weather with their support in natural hazards, storms and bushfires essential to keeping the community safe.

“They’re the same volunteers that are out during the storm season that are then flat out during fire season supporting those operations,” Supt Green said.

“They can do everything from ferrying resources around to getting food and critical supplies out to our firefighters right through to conducting or looking after staging areas where we’ve got a large volume of resources responding where they’re at.”

Supt Green said they were “quite often” called to climb the Stirling Range to assist with rescues.

“SES are quite often called upon to climb to the top of Bluff Knoll and provide that manpower to assist with getting casualties or people who are in distress down to a safer location,” he said.

“Usually that’s in arduous conditions, not only in terms of the climbs and the distances they’ve got to travel, but the weather conditions they’re exposed to.

“And sometimes climbing overnight and then getting up again first thing in the morning to go and do it again.”

Supt Green said Wear Orange Wednesday was a “small token” of appreciation for their efforts, always going “above and beyond”.

“Doesn’t matter what the task, how big, how small, they’re always putting their hands up to come and provide that support,” he said.

Across WA, SES volunteers have attended 2464 incidents across 23,725 hours.