From 31th October 2008 till 2nd November 2008, Gunna and me with part of my Club colleague (Ana with Mona, Tibor with Mav and Elena as helper) participated at Mission Readiness Test (MRT) for entering in wolrd rescuers for rescuing in ruins. Test was held in Pirna near Dresden in Germany. We started our journey at Friday in the morning and we arrived at 7 pm in our BoO (Base of Operations).

At MRT, the IRO wants to see teams to be independent. So, when team put out all equipment from the car, back to it isn't possible any more. This year it was very rigid and we must leave the car few kilometers from the BoO. So, all comfort stays at home. The conditions are similar to really disaster place: you can have a tend and all you bring to yourself and the organizer gives to participants water in the shower (not necessary), toilet and that's it.

From our National Department for rescuing, we got beautiful selfblowing tend and generator so it was really not so cold. The conditions were not so heavy because it was not so cold and it was dry all the time. After setting the tend, the only information we had was that test will begin at 6 am next morning, that it will last for 36 hours and that we have 10 till 15 minutes to be ready when they call us for anything. We had to have full equipment for surviving all the time with us. it showed to us that our scheduale was pretty allright because we managed to sleep few hours. We worked on 7 different ruins, had 20 minutes for every searching and we didn't know how many persons we search till the end of test. At the end, we knew that there was 14 victims.

At few terrains, we had several searchings following each other without resting. On 3 terrains we worked by night. And when I tell by night, I reaaallly mean night: without any light except those ones from my lamp. That's not all. Between two last searchings, we had to march for 11km and had to show orientation by night and heavy fog. We recieved the map with drawn lines from place we have been to place where we must come: our last ruin. This orientation was during the night, during the fog, partially through street and partially through the wood. We succeded. By the way, team leader must usually handle that orientation. Since we didnt' registrate any team leader, the organizer insure for us one Czech team leader. But, that team leader didn't come to MRT. So, we were the only without it. And we didn't practice the orientation before MRT so it so this news was like a cold shower for us. But we managed that and that was truly team work. We were very proud on ourselves.

At the end of the march we came to new ruin and imediately start to search. One of the unhandy moments is fact that noone judge doesn't give to handlers any information about the victims: is it found or not. We saw just the few of victims so we knew for them. The others we didn't see. But, from others from our team we knew that it was right or not. The searchings was all individually, not team alike. The comunication between handlers wasn't allowed.

Searching methods was different from ruin to ruin because they wasn't the same. Some of them was old abbandoned buildings, some was totally crashed and some partially crashed. At some ruins handlers could walk wherever they wanted and at some not. Somewhere judges explained a lot and somewhere not. Everything was with purpose, to see how handler act in stressful conditions. The last day we had a test in INSARAG rules, first aid for human and dogs (very detailed), we got down from building with the dog with rope. That day was the only day (not counting the orientation) when we worked as team and we were very satisfied with our team work.