Providing medical assistance to casualties

Endorsed by
Motivation

Barriers in to provide medical assistance to casualties either by transporting them to a safe place or bringing medical service to the scene (when medical care is not provided by firefighters’ units) - especially in forest fires.

Potential Solutions
Following solutions could be addressing this gap.

There are different doctrines and different organisations of the Emergency Medical Services across countries in terms of responsibilities (firefighting and EMS are provided by the same organisation in some countries, by different organisations in others) and accessibility of the scene ("red zone").

The fast kinetics of forest fires with situations evolving rapidly may put medical services at while severely burnt casualties require urgent medical aid.

References in the literature: the literature provides elements in terms of geolocation of first responders on a crisis scene, but nothing specifically for forest fires.

Rationale & related CM function(s)

Search and rescue operations coordinate activities to find missing people, rescue victims, and provide first aid.
On-site first treatment service is provided by emergency medical services (EMS) personnel brought to the scene.
Off-site treatment is provided when casualties are transported to a deployed field hospital or a regular hospital.
Transportation of EMS personnel, medicine and medical materials needs to be provided to and within the affected area.
A better coordination between firefighting and emergency medical services (EMS) personnel, participating in search and rescue and other response operations, is needed.
A safer and more secure environment needs to established for emergency medical services (EMS) personnel.
eu Portfolio of Solutions web site has been initially developed in the scope of DRIVER+ project. Today, the service is managed by AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH., for the benefit of the European Management. PoS is endorsed and supported by the Disaster Competence Network Austria (DCNA) as well as by the STAMINA and TeamAware H2020 projects.