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Rescue Service
Rescus Service – What we do
Civil Defence volunteers are trained to have a variety of rescue skills ranging from working in fast flowing water, to searching for missing persoons through to use of technical rope skills to help a person in trouble. Below we look at three of the main arms of the Recuse Service and give a typical example of when these skills are used:
- Swiftwater Rescuse – is a water based skill requiring volunteers to operate in a number of water based enviroments. They may include urban flooding, operating in or near rivers or undertaking operations in static water. Training is provided at three levels of technical complexity: Swiftwater Recuse Technical (SRT), Swiftwater & Flood First Responder Instructors (SFRI) & Swiftwater First Responder.
- Rope Rescuse – The secen is set; a member of the public has fallen over a costal cliff; falling some twenty feet. The casuality calls 911 seeking help. They state they can’t move their right leg and are positioned on a narrow cliff ledge. The sever wind revents a resuce by helicoptor and Civil Defence are called to effect assist. The only means to access the patient is by rope. A medical responder decends the cliff and assess the casualtiy. It appear the casualtiy has a broken leg and will require extraction by basket stretcher. The medical responder remains with the casualtiy to monitor their condition and At this point a number of technical rope rescue techniuqes and expertise is deployed to retirve the casualiity.
- Missing Persons – A young person is reported missing; they have not been seen since yesterday morning and we distressed at the recent loss of a closs relative. The Gardai have conducted an inital search; they now wish to expand the search and call in Civil Defence. A number of volunteers arrive with varrisou support vehicles to include Command & Control vehicles. The Civil Defence Search Manager works with the Gardai to devise a search plan based on their training and avaiallbe indormation about the missing person. Consideration is given to public roads, geographical features, water courses
Each of the above functions can act independent of each other; where required the skills can come to gether to create a hightly skilled tenical group caplable of rescuing vunerable persons in a variety of hostile environments.