Meath County Fire & Rescue Service Team Win The Holmatro Challenge at Interschutz in Germany – June 2015
Since the very inception of Rescue Organisation Ireland (ROI) in March 2008 and its development as a registered charity enhancing emergency service training skills across Ireland, Meath Fire Service has been to the fore of the organisation. At the very first ROI National Challenge in February 2009 there were 3 Meath teams taking part out of a total amount of 9, the only county to have more than one team involved. Oldcastle Meath took second place that day and hinted at more potential successes for themselves and Meath in the years to come. Meath senior officer Pádraig Ó Longaigh has been involved with ROI since the inaugural meeting in Mar 2008 and is the current ROI Secretary. Joining him on the ROI executive is Declan Cassidy, Treasurer of ROI and WRO, sub officer with the Ashbourne Brigade in Meath.
The Holmatro rescue challenge event was held in June at the Interschutz international tradeshow in Hannover, Germany, the largest emergency service tradeshow in the world. Meath, as recent winners of the Irish National Challenge, was entered by Acting Chief Officer Ó Longaigh to attend and represent Ireland and ROI. After six days of the event there was great excitement among the Irish attendees when it was announced that Meath had won the prestigious Challenge and took away a cheque for €20K worth of rescue equipment. Not only were they the best team overall, but they had also won the best Incident Commander and best Technical categories as well.
The Meath team are Paul Colleran (Incident Commander) and Nicky Brunton from Oldcastle Fire Brigade; Keith Russell and Alan Campbell from Navan Fire Brigade; David Snowe from Ashbourne fire brigade; and Alan Egan from Dunshaughlin Fire Brigade. Team Manager Pádraig Ó Longaigh.
In all there were 29 teams from 16 different international fire services across Europe at the Challenge and this was the first time such an event has been held by a large tool supplier such as Holmatro. The scenario facing each team was to safely and competently rescue a badly injured casualty within a 20 minute time frame from a crashed car on its roof or side, obstructed by another car and concrete barrier. Judges (‘Assessors’) were assessing all components of the rescue team’s efforts and the ‘casualty’ was assessing the level of care shown to him throughout the 20 minute ‘extrication’.
‘This just goes to show that Ireland can be considered a “Centre of Excellence” in Europe when it comes to RTC training, and Meath is right there in the middle of that. The knowledge, professionalism and dedication of our fire-fighters are second to none’ - Pádraig Ó Longaigh
From this event the Meath team now plans to go on and represent Ireland, along with the Carlow, Laois and Wicklow teams, at the WRO World Rescue Challenge (WRC 2015) which is being hosted by ANSD and takes place this October in Lisbon, Portugal.