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Comment by Chaplain Gerta Coetzee on June 16, 2008 at 10:07am

Our 1st line of priority is Pastoral care to the staff and their families. 2nd is "Trauma Support" on and off scene to the public. We are on call 24 / 7 and get called out by the controll centres. So if you are on call for the next 3 days, you have to baby sit your cellphone and wear uniform "incase" a call comes through. We do not stay in the station, they call us via cellphone. We tend to any call that involves trauma of ANY sort to either the victim OR the victims family or friends. Example: your son of 4 falls off his bunk bed and scraps his knee, but your wife is histerical - then the ems will call us out to calm your wife down and accompany her to hosp with your son or wait for a family member to take over. We also turn out to fires, suicides, hostage takings, robbyries, high-jackings, assualts, natural deaths, resusses, still born babies, murders you name it. If there is a soul in disterss or hurting, we are there.
In this photo, 4 people were killed in this car and I had to trace families and do the death notifications.
Its not only ems that make use of our services, others like private ambulance companies, armed security companies, hosp and many more call us out on a regular basis.
We are volunteers like most of the firemen on this site.
Hope this explains it. Pls ask if you want to know more.