The session gave members of the respective services the opportunity to hone their skills, familiarise themselves with equipment and practice car accident procedures together.

Gunnedah Fire and Rescue Captain David Welch said the training session was invaluable.

“Given the SES are primary responders and we are secondary responders it is important that we work together for the community,” Captain Welch said.

“So any opportunity we have to come together and fine-tune what we do is always welcome.”

Captain Welch said the Gunnedah community would benefit from the training session as well as the service members.

“Any training that helps us work together and strengthen our skills is going to be a bonus for our community,” he said.

“Our relationship with the SES and all the services in town is strong and these types of sessions only help us help the community.

“After all, that’s who we are here to serve.”

Gunnedah Shire SES contoller Peter Thomson said all the emergency services in Gunnedah have a good relationship.

“We work together all the time and our strong relationship across the emergency services is something we are very proud of,” Mr Thomson said.

“The relationship has been strong throughout my time with the SES.”

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Mr Thomson said he hoped to see more cross-training between services in the future.

“We work well together and everything we do is for the benefit of the community,” he said.

“So any training and cross training between services is only going to help us serve the community better.

“We do try and get together for these types of training sessions once or twice a year but logistaclly that can be a bit difficult.

“Hopefully though we will see more cross-training between services including the SES, Fire and Rescue and the Rural Fire Service (RFS) in the future.”