Kildare Fire Service crew receive medals and cert for taking part in Road Traffic Collision event at the weekend

By Kim O'Leary

It was certainly a busy weekend for the brave fire-fighters of Kildare Fire Service who were initiated into the Rescue Organisation Ireland skills competition held in Nenagh Fire Station, Tipperary on Saturday.

The event was originally founded by members of the Irish Fire & Emergency Services as a means of improving, updating & standardising the training of Emergency Service personnel (in particular Fire Service) who regularly respond and deal with Road Traffic Collisions (RTCs) on Irelands roads. Today, ROI is the leading authority on Crash Rescue techniques & RTC training in Ireland and a Level 1 member of the World Rescue Organisation (WRO – www.wrescue.org).

For the Kildare crew, training started a number of weeks ago where a weekly training session was held every week in our central station Newbridge. The introduction to the competition was headed by Kildare ACFO Derek Bergin, who is also a committee member of the ROI. Derek was able to speak highly about the competition from taking part previous and with this formed a team to represent the county at national level.

The day started off with a rapid extrication scenario where the teams had only 10 minutes to stabilise a vehicle and attend to the casualty who was inside. These rapid competitions represented a time critical patient and the aim is to extricate them as quick as possible and medically attend to them immediately. The following picture shows what the crew had to deal with first during this exercise.

The second scenario was known as the complex scenario. It was originally designed around the need to make the scenarios more realistic and give Incident Commanders more of an active role within scenarios. The complexity of the damage in relation to casualty entrapment is more advanced and there is the added complexity of a second casualty and upwards of 3 vehicles involved. The teams have 30 minutes to complete this process.

A number of teams from Ireland took part from various agencies across the country. Also present were crews from Spain and France who were able to share tips and techniques they use with the Irish crews and vice versa. The overall result of the competition went in favour of Laois as they scooped most of the awards from the competition. Kildare however had a great final result in coming 6th overall.

CFO of Kildare Celina Barrett commended the crew on their performance by saying: "Congratulations to the Kildare ROI team on a great performance in there first competition. It’s good to see that all their training efforts and hard work showed through there performance on the day. It was a great result for their first competition and no doubt that the team has learned a lot that they can build on for the future. Congratulations also to ACFO Derek Bergin who has supported and developed the team from its inception."