World Rescue Challenge Cape Town

I put together the first all girl rescue team to take part in the WRO championships which was held in Cape Town. We wore pink and black jumpsuits and for the actual competition we wore a blue purple fire safety jumpsuits.

The competition consists of 3 evolutions. Rapid evolutions in which you have 10 minutes to remove the patient. Limited Evolution whereby you have 20 minutes to remove a patient using only hand tools and the final evolution the Unlimited evolution - here you use all your equipment, jaws of life and tools to remove the patient in 20 minutes. We came in 18th overall and the first SA team (all male of course) came in 14th overall in the world. Not too shabby for a bunch of girls!!.

Like all international events an opening ceremony takes place and Cape Town did not disappoint. It was huge fun be the ladies in pink and meeting all the fire fighters from around the world. Great good, great entertainment and lots of photos later and we were ready for our competition!!

Then the actual competition started in earnest over three days.

The rapid extrication:

then we moved onto the Limited Evolution in which we had 20 minutes to remove our patient we did this in less than 8 minutes. We had huge pressure on us with most of the male local teams beating against us - you can imagine that the last thing they wanted was to be beaten by a bunch of girls!! the overseas teams however were fantastic they encouraged us and gave us valuable tips. We did really well in this evolution and this was just what we needed to have the confidence for our last evolution as the rapid evolution did not go as well as planned probably due to the huge nevers and all the eye watching our every move LOL.

the next and final evolution the Unlimited came as a huge surprise to us but we were almost doing cartwheels when we saw that we had a "taxi" to cut up, we do this all the time in Johannesburg!! for the overseas firefighters this was something new so all eyes where again on us. This one we where finishing again in less than 10 minutes and the judge came up to me and said if we are finished I can punch my fist in the air to mark our completion. We were ecstatic with the results and the final pictures speak volumes!!

The team walking into battle!!

Instructions flying and into action go the girls

A very elated and relieved team!!!

the New South Wales team previous World Champs - they gave a huge support and great tips!!

Once all the formal stuff is done its time to play and play we do with our traditional 'SWAP EVENING"
all the teams from around the world exchange memorabilia and fire house t-shirts, caps and many laughs. Our pink Team Zodwa t-shirts were in hot demand and we just did not have enough to go around!! Every year this is the time to meet all friends and exchange stories!!