La Spezia, a maxi emergency exercise

30/10/14

A complex exercise, the one that was held in the waters off the Morin promenade in La Spezia on October 29, which involved members of the Red Cross, the 118 Service of the ASL 5 of La Spezia, the Fire Department, the Maritime Consortium Navigazione Golfo dei Poeti, of the SEPOR SpA, of the Port Authority of La Spezia, of the Helicopters Section of the Coast Guard of Luni-Sarzana, of the Nuclei of the Police and of the Navy represented by COMFORDRAG-COMFORAUS with the diver department, the training office and the Health Service.

The Mine Countermeasure Command team has for the first time shown the use of the 'Jason's Cradle' stretcher and the advantages deriving from its use. The procedure, already a thesis of specialization at the Sant'Anna Institute of Pisa, was refined between the health service, the diving service and the Office of Studies of COMFORDRAG in order to achieve the best first aid conditions even with the use of small rubber dinghies supplied to the minesweeper units.

The consolidated collaboration with the special courses section of the CRI of La Spezia, from which the invitation to participate in this exercise was created and which had already made possible the formation of OPSA operators (Multipurpose Water Rescue Operator), allowed time the acquisition of a growing awareness of the delicate problem of saving an injured person in the water.

It was therefore a great opportunity to interface and coordinate with organizations of different backgrounds and training in case of hypothetical common action in extreme emergency intervention and to lay the foundations for new forms of collaboration.