River Shannon Focus of Major Incident Exercise Planned for UL Students

31st December 2023

A simulated Major Incident Exercise will take place in January on the University of Limerick north campus as Paramedic Studies students, emergency personnel from Limerick Fire and Rescue Service, National Ambulance Service and the Explosive Ordnance Division (EOD) of the Irish Defence Forces (bomb squad) accompanied by An Garda Siochána responded to a highly realistic training exercise

A swift water rescue in the River Shannon is one of several situations which students will have to respond to at a major incident exercise at the University of Limerick.

Loading a stretcher onto an Irish Coast Guard helicopter while rotor blades are turning will also be part of the training for students of medicine, nursing and paramedics at one of the largest exercises of its type.

As The Sunday Independent reports, the exercise planned for January 25th is the idea of Frank Keane who is a specialist in major incident training.

Keane, from Ennis, Co Clare, is course director of the BSc in paramedic studies at UL, and formerly worked with the National Ambulance Service (NAS).

“We spend so many years training doctors and nurses and midwives and paramedics and they all qualify on a Friday – and we expect them to be able to work together the following Monday !” Keane explains.

“All of these students will end up working with or in the emergency services at some point,” he says.

Staff from Limerick Fire and Rescue Service, the NAS, the Army Explosive Ordnance Division or “bomb squad”, Garda Armed Support Unit, Limerick Civil Defence and the Irish Coast Guard will be involved.

After the car crashes into the “crowd”, the students will be asked to respond to an evolving emergency situation, to handle multiple casualties, to deal with a crime scene and to implement a swift water rescue, he says.

Some 50-60 “casualties” who will have to be triaged and treated, a field hospital will be set up, and the event will culminate in the Irish Coast Guard Rescue 115 from Shannon flying into the UL campus.

A smaller exercise took place at UL last year.

Read more in The Sunday Independent here

Published in Shannon Estuary, Coastguard, Rescue

Published in Shannon Estuary

Tagged under

Shannon

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