When John Koutras first became a local State Emergency Service volunteer, he'd barely handled a chainsaw.
Eighteen months later he was the unit controller.
The former banker, local counsellor and two-term mayor of a Melbourne suburb moved to Kilmore in central Victoria after spending most of his life in the city.
"I was very much an office worker and not a hands-on person as far as using tools or equipment," he recalls.
Regardless, the volunteer in-charge threw Mr Koutras some ropes and invited him to practise his knots.
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A year and a half later, in 2020, he not only knew the ropes, he was leading the unit's transformation.
Under his leadership, the outfit has swollen from 12 to more than 40 members and there are six times as many female volunteers.
"My big push has been to get more women into the State Emergency Service. When I joined the Kilmore unit it was very much a male-dominated volunteer force," he says.
"Women play a very important role."
SES organisations around the country are on the drive for members ahead of the 2022 emergency season, as floods continue to batter southeastern states and with bushfires underway in Western Australia.
Mr Koutras also found success in expanding his management team and improving community engagement, a shift from the traditional tools-focused, hierarchical VICSES, which has its roots in civil defence-era history.
While all training is provided by the SES, Mr Koutras works at matching individuals with their skill-set.
"Whether it's someone with a nursing background or a roof-plumbing background, we bring those skills into it and they become extremely valuable," he says.
"All of us have got something to bring to the table at the State Emergency Service."
The SES instructs volunteers in heavy tool use, leadership, first aid and basic rescue skills, and runs a junior program for 15 to 18-year-olds.
"As you as you progress, it's great in providing all this training at no cost to you," Mr Koutras says.
"It's like you're trading off your time for skills that you're learning ... and also helping the community."
While volunteer numbers have remained relatively steady around 5000 over the past decade, the VICSES is always pushing for more, particularly in the regions where emergency responses tend to be community-led.
"In the city, you've got everything at hand and there's professionals who are sitting in their everyday job on a roster waiting for an alarm or pager to go off," says the former mayor of Whitehorse City, which takes in Box Hill and Nunawading in Melbourne's east.
"In the country, it's very much people going about their everyday life in their normal jobs and if the pager goes off, whether it's SES or CFA (Country Fire Authority), you basically drop what you're doing and run off to help."
While recent trends in regional population growth are echoed in the demographics of his volunteers, Mr Koutras says the frequency and severity of emergencies are also on the rise.
"I think every time we have an emergency, it's bigger than the last one."
The Victorian SES is coming off the busiest two-year period in its history.
A storm in June 2021 resulted in 225 calls in just a few hours and neighbouring SES and CFA units were called in to assist Kilmore's 25 to 30 volunteers.
"The winds, the rain, the ferocity of it," Mr Koutras says.
"It was just frightening ... and it got to a stage where it was too dangerous to be out there."
The clean-up took five days with help from neighbouring units.
"That's one of the great things about SES, that if one specific area has a larger than normal event, volunteers come from around the state and give us a hand and vice versa."
Mr Koutras hopes to continue to grow that network drawing on people from all backgrounds and skill-sets.
"Everyone is welcome because there's various roles ... we are humans dealing with humans.
"It's about bringing the right attitude and the rest can be taught."
Australian Associated Press
