novosti

"IDASSA 2007."
(NATO protection and rescue exercise)

First time ever, our SAR dog team participated NATO excercise as Civil defense team. Our team: Ana with Mona, me and Gunna and Sara Marević with Bon (from CRDA).
This was second excercise which was in Croatia (first was in 2002. near Makarska): "IDASSA 2007." (Idassa = old name of Zadar city). It lasted from 21st till 24th of May 2007 but we arrived much more earlier. All events happened in Zadar surroundings.

More than 1200 participants from 44 countries took part. People were splitted into 55 teams. Croatia had 20 teams with totally 179 people. The main objective of the IDASSA 2007 exercise wass to improve cooperation between NATO country members and the Partnership Work Programme countries.

Participants had only the main scenario. We got all details every evening for the following day which was given by LEMA (local emergency main authority). According to the scenario, after destructive earthquake, entire settlement was devastated in Bokanjac area. International rescue teams had to search for and rescue the bodies of injured and casualties.
In industrial harbour of Gaženica, series of different accidents happenned: participants had to handle and decontaminate the area, rescue the injured, carried out extensive underwater searched of bodies of fire victims that fell from the boat and rescue the victims using boats and helicopters.

All teams accommodated themselves in camp Soline in Biograd during that weekend. Camp was starting point for all teams (over 1200 participants) during entire exercise.
During all days, NATO team evaluated mobility of teams and their dedication to work. The evaluation was very positive.

Our dog team worked in Bokanjac. Every morning we had to get up in 6 or 5:30 which was the most stressfull thing :-))

We worked all the time with National Interventional Fire Brigade from Kolovare near Dubrovnik. First, we searched with dogs and then Fire Brigade started to locate the victims in detail. They searched with vibraphones and vibrascopes which was very interesting for us because we new in theory how that works. Now, we saw it in practice. It's very important for the vibraphones that there's total silence because it detect all the movements. Then, with little sonda, vibrascope detect where's the victim.

After all of that, we must marked the ruin with sprey and with special INSARAG markings. Fire brigade showed to us as very phenomenal koleagues.

We had many beautiful moments with some participants, especially (besides Fire brigade) with people from Polland and with Slovenians. Whenever we meet Slovenians, it seems that they're great people. They even called us and our dogs for ride to Pasman in their own boat. One of them, talented in work with dogs, gave us some precious advices in dogs work.

Croatian President Stjepan Mesić also visited IDASSA at Wednesday.

After three exhausted but beautiful days, at Thursday was presented demonstration drill. Premier Ivo Sanader and ministries Berislav Rončević and Ivica Kirin, NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General Maurits Jochems hosted the excercise.

This was perfect accasion to see how the dogs work and what we have to do more to improve the dogs but also to improve us. We heard many other experiences and learned some new things. But, also we saw that we work excellent as team and that we can mannage such kind of situation.