Donegal Civil Defence participate in Search & Rescue Demo

20 July 2016

Donegal Civil Defence participated in the Irish Coast Guard’s Marine Search and Rescue demonstration on Saturday 18^th July in Moville.

The exercise involved some of Ireland’s principal Search and Rescue resources and other participants included Donegal based volunteer Coast Guard units, the Sligo based Coast Guard Rescue Helicopter , Naval ship LÉ Orla,  Air Corps Casa, RNLI’s new Shannon Class All Weather Lifeboat, Bord Iascaigh Mhara, UK Maritime Coastguard Agency, Irish Water Safety and Mountain Rescue Ireland.

Speaking after the event Gerard O’Flynn, the Coast Guard’s Search and Rescue Operations Manager said: ‘This exercise afforded the public a wonderful opportunity to see Ireland’s search and rescue resources conducting a series of realistic but challenging tasks, more importantly it enabled the Coast Guard to exercise interoperability between the different assets.”

The event included a series of water based safety demonstrations.

“Prevention and adherence to basic safety is the key element in minimising loss of life at sea and on our waterways”, concluded SARs Manager Gerard O’Flynn.

The main events:
Mud rescue demonstration by nearby members of the Maritime Coastguard Agency, Bay Field in the low water river bed.

Greencastle Coast Guard unit executed a number of cliff rescue displays.

Rescue 115, the Sligo based rescue helicopter along with the crew of LÉ Orla completed a number of winching exercise. From the deck of LÉ Orla and a “wet” lift.

Donegal Civil Defence displayed their new Drone and its capabilities as an effective search and recovery device.

The Air Corps Casa demonstrated the use of airborne life rafts as well as conducting communications exercises with air and surface resources.

Over the course of the day, Volunteer Coast Guard units from Donegal, Mulroy, Killybegs, Greencastle and Bunbeg completed number of rescue manoeuvres including – man over board, swimmer/paddle board in difficult, fishing vessel on fire.

 

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