First phase of a fire and rescue department starts with the rescue part first.

I mentioned in a previous blog that the island of La Gonave needs some sort of fire and rescue department.  Also the need of a coordinator that would be responsible of keeping the island departments in shape.  The first part of starting a fire and rescue department is to start a rescue squad.

The island of La Gonave could be potentially fatal with respect to ravine falls, children and adults being lost, collapsed buildings, fire, flooding, and individuals being trapped in crashed vehicles.

A search and rescue squad would be a volunteer group that could help handle these potential issues.  While they would not be able to stop large fires, they would be able to handle small fires that start.  The startup cost of a rescue squad would be by far cheaper than a fire department.  The advantage of getting the rescue department up first is that these individuals would be trained to handle on-call response calls and train in the above mentioned issues.

We all know how deadly an earthquake can be, so having a team that can help lift heavy slabs of concrete is important.  La Gonave, more specifically Anse-a-Galets, is building more buildings made of cinder block.  These structures are strong against hurricanes but if not constructed correctly will fail in earthquakes.  Having a team that can scan an area the size of a neighborhood to the size of the entire island would be the job of the rescue team.  Using tracking and GPS systems, it will cut down on locating lost persons.  During natural disasters communication fails.  A rescue team could use HAM radio as a way of communicating and even alerting for help beyond the rescue teams scope.  The team will know how to scale down a ravine and extract someone who has fallen.

Stay tuned as we develop this!

Go Gonave!

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