A two-car crash at Lancaster Road, St. James, around 11:00 a.m. today pressed the island???s emergency services into immediate action.

Fire tenders from the St. James Fire Station and the Bridgetown Fire Station were among the first tenders responding to the crash, along with 12 fire officers.

The crash left one man trapped in his vehicle, while the other was ejected from his vehicle and later wandered away from the scene, before falling into a 50-foot ravine.

This all formed part of a rescue simulation to mark Fire Service Week, being celebrated under the theme: A Legacy of Service, A Pursuit of Excellence. The week concludes tomorrow, Saturday, October 3.

Station Officer, Henderson Patrick, explained that this prompted a call for additional resources, including the Fire Service???s Combination Ladder Platform (CLP), to haul the individual to safety. ??One team of fire officers used the jaws-of-life to free the injured man from his vehicle, while a second team entered the gully to rescue the second victim.

The latter was stabilised by a team of fire officers, including one trained as an Emergency Medical Technician, before he was hauled up by the CLP and delivered into the hands of personnel from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital???s Ambulance Service.

Mr. Patrick explained that the primary objective of the exercise was to get fire officers at out stations to work together with those from the Bridgetown Fire Station to hone their skills and expertise in various areas.

In addition, he said, the aim was to see how the CLP would function in an environment such as the one presented at today???s accident scene, and noted that it could be used in a number of situations, including rescues as high as 100 feet into the air.?????You can use it in short environments, those with restricted spacing or in environments where you may need to extend it more,??? Mr. Patrick explained.

The Station Officer further stated that the exercise was designed to test the response time from the various stations to the accident site, given the traffic that would be on the road at the time, and allowed officers the opportunity to work with the equipment to build confidence.

???We wanted the simulation to be as real as possible. We have the police carrying out their roles, and the emergency ambulance service. All of this is in an effort to ensure that the agencies that have to respond in emergencies get to know each other, that they can work together, and that each of them understands their role and function so when they come together, there is more efficiency and not time wasting,??? he pointed out.

julia.rawlins-bentham@barbados.gov.bb

Pin It on Pinterest