International DVRPS excercise

From 18th till 20th of April 2008, Slovenian DVRPS, with help from Ljubljanas department for rescue and protection, has organized SAR excerise. From my Club went my friend Ana Viller with her Mona, Božena Skoko with Dex and Gunna and me.

We went at Friday afternoon with two full cars with everything what we had to have. Excercises like this has its goal to see how would it be in real mission so all the tasks are for that goal.
The organizer set up Base Of Operation (BOO), a camp, and we made our own tent. We knew from before that will have to work 24 hours starting from 4 am next morning. The sky was pretty dark and we feared from rain. Luckilly, the rain falled few times and that was it.
At the team leader meeting (and Božena and me choose Ana for leader - it was unanimous :-)) we got some tips. Teams were made of 3 persons and there were teams from different countries: Slovenia (7 teams), Croatia (3 teams), Germany (1 team), Czech Republic (1 team) and Austria (3 teams).

All team leaders got the map with instructions how to come to the BOO (we were settled at DVRPS area), we didn't know how many victims are there, we will know the time schedule at the spot, we have to know alpinism, first aid. Elements for getting points were also team work and work of the dog, number of found victims and so on...
Ana, Božena and me discussed about some strategies yet in Zagreb: Ana was obligated for alpinism, Božena for first aid and me for INSARAG markings.
Our backpacks were heavy beacuse we have to put in it everything for 24 hours. The most heavy, but also, the most needed, was water.
The number of victims was the same for each team but no every place had the same number of victims. Most of teams, our included, had 0 victim at one location which was a pressure with purpose. We had that "no" victim after hard marching which was especcialy hard for the dogs because after loing walk they worked and find noone.

During the day we had many searchings and other tasks with only one break for about hour and a half. Organizer took care of transportation: even 16 fire vehicles transported teams to different locations during all the day, all locations were prepared excelent! It was really good organized.

We had totally 6 searchings in ruins (one by night) and 2 searchings in woods (also one by night), all at different locations and all lasted 30 minutes. We had to march two times (5km and 8 km) and immediately start to work after the marching.

Two times we had to show knowing of first aid and alpinism. Once we must get over the creek and one over the river, both time with dogs and backpacks.

You can see below how it looked like :-)

With last atoms we did our last searching and Sa zadnjim atomima snage odradili smo zadnje ponoćno traženje i mrtvi umorni ali zadovoljni postignutim krenuli prema našem "kampu". Dok su nam psi spavali zasluženim snom, u vatrogasnim kolima smo zbrajali sve ponađene osobe: bilo ih je 12.
Next morning, after few hours of sleep, we found out that there was 14 victims. We found 12 which was more that enough to pass this excercise positively: more then 70% which is minimum. We were very satisfied with work of our dogs and we got the most points in group with other teams with 12 found victims: 2 215 points.

The dogs were very conductive in searchings and gave as their maximum. I knew that they were very tired and at the end of the day exhausted but in spite of that they ran and ran and ran... it was so beautiful to see.
Gunna was really more then excellent and I was very sastisfied with her. I was afraid that she wouldn't do such good searchings in ruin because we had very little trainings in ruins (few trainings from autumn) but she obvious has a talent :-)
In last months we concentrated in searching in woods beacuse we need it more often. The second reason is preparations for th WCh.

...LINK WITH COMPLETE RESULTS...