Development of Carpathian Mountain Rescue Cooperation Platform
Mountains are for many families, youth and elders the first go to holiday destination in the Visegrad region. Either for a quick weekend getaway, or longer seasonal vacation, mountains offer multiple activities from skiing and snowboarding, to hiking, bungee jumping and many others. We all enjoy fresh air and peaceful forests. However, mountains also can be, unfortunately, very dangerous. It is when we need skilled mountain rescuers!
Increasing number of tourists causes the increase of cases requiring coordinated, efficient, skilled rescue activities. Tourists should be guaranteed their safety and rescue of life and health. Project ´Development of Carpathian Mountain Rescue Cooperation Platform’ coordinated by NGO Mountains Guides Association “ROVIN” with V4 partners organised Specialized large-scale international trainings for rescuers and other involved services (police, border guards, forestry and protected areas, mountain guides) in Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
The project specific objectives are:
– information and experience exchange in search-rescue operations and actions;
– transmission of standards and best practices in rescue and search activities in mountains/caves/rivers;
– creation of the safety terms for tourists and locals through enlargement of the mobile application “Self-rescuer”.
Thanks to the International Visegrad Fund support the Carpathian Mountain Rescue Cooperation platform is developing. More than 170 people were involved in the project activities, more than 200 specialists from different countries joined the platform, indicating а great public interest to the project and great potential for its development. All collected information about search and rescue points, first aid points, tourist shelters in the mountainous regions of the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine, border services that were compiled during this project iare placed in the mobile application “Self-Rescue”. It is available for download and can be used by ordinary tourists and locals.
V4 partners – Mountain Volunteer Search and Rescue – Krynica Group (PL); Mountain Rescue Service Pieniny National Park (SK); Mountain Rescue Service (Jizerske Mountains)(CZ) – demonstrated the great experience of such activity, especially in conduction of the search-rescue actions, involvement of the volunteers to rescue actions.
