Three firefighters who performed CPR on an elderly man after they pulled him from his crashed car were among those honoured at a special awards ceremony for the ACT's emergency services on Tuesday.
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ACT firefighters Ken Marsden, Brett Hillam and Damian Tutty received the St John Save a Life Award after they freed a man from his car and worked on him for 25 minutes after he'd suffered a heart attack and crashed.
"It's a little known fact that firies do quite a lot of medical stuff," Mr Marsden, a senior firefighter said.
"I've been a firefighter for 11 years and numerous times during my career I've had to give CPR to casualties as do most other firies at some point, and that can be due to cardiac arrest at car [accidents] or a lot of our CPR jobs are literally members of the public that have gone into cardiac arrest and they need someone there ASAP."
Mr Marsden said they've since heard from the man who was "doing really well".
Emergency services minister Mick Gentleman presented the medals, clasps and awards to 42 staff and volunteers during the ACT Emergency Services Agency's National Medal Ceremony.
He said the recipients together represented a total of 820 years of active service to the ACT community.
"The commitment shown by volunteers never goes unnoticed and together with all members of the ESA, you regularly contribute to the Canberra community in times of need," Minister Gentleman said.
Engineer Ben Dyer received a national medal for his longstanding service to the ACTSES and to his bushfire brigade back in WA.
A volunteer with the Belconnen unit for 13 years, Dr Dyer said it was the ability to help someone in need that kept him going on the coldest, darkest and wettest of nights.
"The greatest thing wth the SES is you can go and make a difference in somebody's life when things are really bad and you an turn it around for them," Dr Dyer said.
"There was a big hailstorm that came through down right the southern end of Tuggeranong a few years ago. We'd done a whole series of jobs and we got to one house at about 10.30 at night and we knocked on the door and the lady came out in her dressing gown and this lady, she was about my mum's age, had gone to bed with a big hole in the roof and she didn't know what to do so she'd gone to bed.
"About half an hour later, the hole was sealed up, we found some old tiles, we fixed it all up and it was absolutely rock solid and I'd like to think if that was my mum somebody else would do it for me."
