THREE of Bathurst's most skilled State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers have travelled east to support flood response efforts this week.
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Parts of the state were hit by enormous amounts of rain in recent weeks, causing substantial flood in multiple areas.
READ ALSO: NSW flood threat as weather shifts north
In an effort to respond to the crisis, numerous SES volunteers have been called in from drier territory to assist.
Acting superintendent deputy zone commander Josh Clark said multiple people from Bathurst have joined the response.
Zeak Smith, the unit commander for Bathurst SES, was among those deployed to Gosford this week, where he took on the role of sector commander.
"He was deployed there on Tuesday and he will be back over the weekend at some stage. He was deployed there as part of a team to go there," Mr Clark said.
Andrew Fletcher and Marina Gray have also travelled from Bathurst to flood affected areas.
Mr Fletcher, the unit commander of the SES Capability Unit in Bathurst, has gone to Metford as the deputy incident controller for night shift, while Ms Gray was deployed as operational support.
All three Bathurst people are not paid employees of the SES and are aiding in the response in a completely volunteer capacity.
Mr Clark said it was common for volunteers to be deployed to other areas to assist in disasters.
"There's a good saying and an old saying, 'Many hands make light work', and that's very true with deploying resources and people with special skillsets across NSW," he said.
With Bathurst largely unaffected by the recent wet weather, it made sense for it to be one of the communities volunteers were drawn from.
"Across NSW there is a number of SES areas or zones and often we will support each other from the resources that we have with the areas that are not affected," Mr Clark said.
"We haven't had a significant operational response required out west at the present time and in southern NSW, so we often send people from the not affected areas of the state in to support the affected areas to help manage fatigue, skillsets and that sort of thing."
Mr Clark said it was possible that more Bathurst volunteers could be deployed, but that will depend on how the flood situation evolves over the coming days.
"As the tempo of the operation response starts to slow down - thankfully the weather has eased up - there may still be the requirement to send people, but that's looking less and less likely as the hours and days go by," he said.
"We have additional people on standby to be deployed to support operations, including field teams as well."
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