Members of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) Fire and Rescue Service recently completed three weeks of intensive training and familiarisation in rope access and vertical rescue techniques, as part of ongoing Land Based Rescue training.
The training program was aimed at enhancing the RSIPF Fire and Rescue Service capability to include rescue from heights and depths.
Two groups of ten Fire fighters attended the training which included both theory and practical exercises. The familiarisation covered all aspects of rope access and vertical rescue. The initial training sets a solid foundation for more advanced rope rescue training scheduled for early 2016.
A vertical rescue capability could be deployed if a person is trapped or injured in a difficult to access location such as high level building site, telephone or electrical towers, shafts or mine sites, cliffs or steep slopes.
The Solomon Islands Police Act 2013 stipulates that apart from providing general policing functions, the RSIPF also have the responsibility of providing a land based rescue capacity.
These functions are provided through the Fire and Rescue service, who are a specialist department of the RSIPF.
The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) Participating Police Force (PPF) supported the training, led by a senior officer from Fire and Rescue New South Wales.
Other training provided by RAMSI PPF to the RSIPF Fire and Rescue Service included recently completed courses in first aid and first aid ‘train the trainer’. The PPF has also provided a bulk water carrying truck, an 11,000 litre fire truck, a rescue/hazardous materials truck and an ambulance.
The training and equipment have considerably improved the capability of the RSIPF Fire and Rescue Service.