The Department of Health and Human Services hosted the training day at Nhill on Tuesday. 

Department emergency management co-ordinator David Tepper said the day was about dealing with extended heatwaves. 

“We discussed how we could work together in an emergency,” he said.

Mr Tepper said the aim of the day was to reduce the effects of an extended heatwave on the community. 

“It’s about having a more efficient and co-ordinated response,” he said.

“Heatwaves are one of the biggest killers of all natural disasters in Australia.

“It does not get a lot of publicity because it’s not a fast moving event.

“It’s not something that you can take pictures of or that you would see on the news.”

Mr Tepper said the Wimmera had experienced two severe heatwaves in the past few years.

“We had a very high impact heatwave in 2009 during the Black Saturday fires,” he said.

“We actually lost more people to the heatwave than the fire.

“We had another severe event in 2014.”

Police, firefighters, paramedics, state emergency service volunteers and Wimmera council officers attended the day.

“We always get a lot more out of working together than we do as separate organisations,” Mr Tepper said.