By Garry Howe
There was a yell, a bang… then nothing.
Firefighter Tony Ward was on the phone to Nar Nar Goon CFA Captain Geoff Bramley late in the afternoon on a Thursday in October last year checking to see who was on standby to cover the trucks that evening.
“Hands free, of course,” Geoff interjects as Tony relives the moment.
Their conversation ended abruptly when Geoff let out a panicked yell, there was an audible bang, then silence.
Geoff was almost home, along Nar Nar Goon-Longwarry Road, when he was collected from behind.
The other driver was distracted, telling emergency service personnel at the scene that he was removing a stone from his boot.
Tony tried to ring Geoff back twice without success and within two minutes his pager went off. He knew where he was heading.
Tony and brigade lieutenant Wes Ritchie, with whom Geoff had been speaking at the fire station only minutes before, were on the first truck to turn out. They were relieved to see it had been a rear impact. Head-on or side collisions are not usually pretty.
Under normal circumstances, members who know a victim are stood down from the crash scene, but in this case the CFA Captain was known to everyone.
He had been turning out to accidents for 39 years, the past 20 of those at Nar Nar Goon so his brigade colleagues took a deep breath and pressed on.
Geoff doesn’t remember much of what happened next. He said he entered an altered conscious state at first, then became a little more lucid.
“I remember saying to the guys (rescuers) that I would rather be on their side than mine.”
The next thing he knew, he was at the Nar Nar Goon Recreation Reserve being loaded into a helicopter to take him to the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
There he was diagnosed as having a fractured vertebrae and bleeding on the brain. He spent five days in the neurological high dependency unit.
The accident capped a bad few months for the Bramleys.
Geoff and the kids had only just lost wife and mother Deb to cancer and both Geoff’s parents have also passed away in the last six months.
Deb’s smiling face beams out from the brigade notice board, where her funeral service booklet has been pinned… taking pride of place.
“It’s been a pretty tough few months, not only for me but for the brigade,” Geoff said.
“Deb has been just as much a part of this place as I have.
“We are like a family here. If someone gets hurt and we all feel the side effects.”
It had been a rough few weeks, with brigade members turning out to four fatal accidents in the lead-up to Geoff’s ordeal.
With their captain in hospital, brigade members gathered to debrief that Thursday night and they scheduled a family day for the Sunday to get people together again.
Geoff was banned from driving for three months and could not be an active member of the brigade, but he still walked the three and a half kilometres from home to the fire station most days.
“This place is better than any men’s shed,” he said, smiling.
“We talk through things and offer support, which has been invaluable to me. We know each other so well.”
The driving ban was lifted a few weeks ago and the Nar Nar Goon CFA captain is back on deck.
He said he will now look at road trauma in a different light, but the accident has not made him any less active.
His brigade colleagues point out that of the 42 jobs they have handled so far this year, the captain has been on 27 of them. Of those 42, 11 were road rescues.
Last year Geoff personally responded to 186 calls in the nine months he was available.
When the Gazette arrived at the Nar Nar Goon station to interview Geoff about his experience for the Towards Zero campaign, the siren sounded twice within a minute.
Geoff and Tony were quickly off to a multiple car pile-up in Clyde Road, Berwick, so the interview and photo shoot was postponed.
On the way there, they were astounded to be held up by a driver who was seemingly oblivious to the lights, sirens and honking of the fire truck horn.
When they eventually pulled alongside, they were even more astounded to discover that the driver was on his phone.
They hope the fire truck’s dash cam caught the registration plate, so he can be held to account.
There are no qualms about turning him in. They are all too familiar with the sad consequence of distracted driving… from the captain down.
