The Mountain Rescue and Intervention Group of the Civil Guard and the Rescue and Salvage Group of the Junta de Castilla y León have held this Tuesday in Vegacervera (León) the first joint practice of the protocol for specific cases in terms of rescue signed between both administrations last year. Both administrations have carried out a total of 1,624 rescues in the last ten years, since the collaboration agreement on mountain rescue in areas of difficult access was signed in 2011.
The Government delegate in Castilla y León, Virginia Barcones, together with the brigadier general in chief of the 12 Civil Guard Zone in Castilla y León, Luis del Castillo, and the director of the Civil Protection and Emergency Agency of the Junta de Castilla y León, Irene Cortés, witnessed the exercise in which Barcones highlighted the importance of collaboration and “good coordination between institutions”, which “results in the citizen and in better, more effective and efficient services”.
Castilla y León has two Civil Guard rescue groups, the one in Sabero -which has participated in the drill- and another located in Barco de Ávila; They are joined by two other Rescue Units that are located in Arenas de San Pedro and Riaza, in an orography with “many mountain areas to attend to.” All of them carried out more than 2,100 actions in 2021 in which they rescued 1,501 people, while until April of this year “similar figures” were recorded with 443 aid to victims.
The number of rescues carried out by these four specialized Civil Guard teams was 197 in 2021 and 49 in this first quarter of 2022. In addition to the rescues, they also carried out 150 searches in 2021, 39 of them in the mountains, and 45 searches until the end of April this year. The total amount of aid and support to 112, the emergency number of the Junta de Castilla y León, an institution with which the GREIM maintain a permanent collaboration, was 2,148 during the past year and until April 31 of this year, they were 768.
The director of the Civil Protection and Emergencies Agency, Irene Cortés, has agreed with the Government delegate on the “need” to carry out exercises like the one on Tuesday in a Community “very extensive and with mountain landscapes”, where ” situations that require explicit coordination in terms of rescues” for which “a clear coordination and collaboration protocol” is established.
A dozen members of each team have participated in the maneuvers, in which an injured person has been rescued with a health assessment by the GRS and transferred, as well as two helicopters, the BO105 of the Leon Helicopter Unit, known like Cuco, and the Ecureiul helicopter of the GRS, called Rebeco.
