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Welcome to European Union project CoSafe. |
Cooperation for Safety in sparsely populated areas
A summary of the seminar
“AWARENESS OF MOUNTAIN DISASTERS ~RISKS AND RESCUE~”
held in
Akureyri, Iceland, 17th of March 2010 |
As part of the regular CoSafe
workshop in Iceland an international seminar was held on the 17th of
March. The seminar was a huge success with over 80 attendants, who
represented the CoSafe Project, the Cross-border Mountain rescue,
stage 2 project as well as different bodies in Iceland, all related
to disaster preparedness in some way or another.
The seminar
offered a mixture of lectures and exhibition. The above projects,
CoSafe and the Cross-border Mountain rescue, stage 2 project started
by introducing their projects. Representatives from rescue groups in
Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Scotland and Norway introduced their
different organizations of rescue work in order for the audience to
understand the systems better. Then there were presentations about
the interesting history of rescue clothes in Iceland and a
comprehensive presentation about the unique work of the Icelandic
Search and Rescue service (ICESAR) which has very good reputation
worldwide. A representative from the Icelandic Civil protection
department gave the audience very good overview of their
organization and how they work, especially when the coordination
centre needs to be activated. The Icelandic Coast guard play a big
role in search and rescue and one of the staff explained their part
in the search and rescue system.
A very interesting lecture
was also given on how weather can affect human security and
environment and took an example of the necessity of evacuation
related to eruption / floods in the southern part of Iceland (which
had to be activated due to the eruption in Eyjafjallajokull (written
on the 20th of April 2010)). In addition lectures were given about
the application of TETRA system in disasters and the organization of
training courses for rescue people.
The final speaker, who
is a mountain guide, gave the audience an insight into an
interesting case report, and experienced a rescue in one of the
rural mountains when bad weather, long distances, waiting time and
very difficult situation characterized everything.
During breaks
the attendants had the chance to wander about the exhibition with
different posters, e.g. about the different products and services as
a result of the CoSafe project.
The Scots introduced their
“Katie” stretcher, being a very applicable stretcher in a rescue
operation and the Swedes introduced their GUIDE system, a GOOGLE
based product, which can be used to locate resources / equipment etc
in different places.
Finally we had full bodied “dolls”
dressed up in different rescue clothes reflecting the history of
rescue clothes in Iceland.
The organizers were very pleased with
the seminar which provided a lot of information for as well as lot
of interactive discussion which hopefully can lead to further
cooperation on an international basis.
- Latest updated information you always find at our homepage
www.cosafe.eu
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