On 10 December, the final promotional event of the NAMIRG project took place at the European Parliament. The team met with Members of the European Parliament, Representatives from the European Commission’s Directorate General for EU Civil Protection & Humanitarian Aid (DG ECHO), and representatives from the Permanent Delegations of Slovenia, Croatia and Italy to the EU, to present the outcomes of the project.
The partnership has successfully elaborated a personnel training manual, a handbook on standard operating procedures (SOP) for preparing the NAMIRG squad and define the operations to follow in the event of a fire at sea and guidelines for materials and devices necessary for the NAMIRG team during helicopter transfer and fire-fighting operations.
Moreover, the squad of 27 firefighters has followed several courses and trainings in Trieste, Rovinj, Ljubljana, Pavia, La Spezia, Split, (namely Hot Fire, Sea Survival, Helicopter Underwater Escape, and Helo), carried out four on-board fire-fighting simulation and exchanged experiences with other international MIRG teams from the Netherlands and Finland.
The host of the event, MEP Valter Flego praised NAMIRG for “bringing together people horizontally and vertically from local, national and international level“. The head of Civil Protection Policy from DG ECHO, Julia Stewart-David congratulated NAMIRG for being a good example of a project that opens doors for more cooperation after having successfully carried out its activities.
The event has given the opportunity to our project leaders and firefighter brigades to explain how the project was developed, the difficulties encountered and how they managed to put into place a specially trained and equipped team of firefighters who can now be transported on board of a helicopter to ships on fire at sea to bring humanitarian aid.
The Secretary General of the CEI-ES, Roberto Antonione, warmly thanked all partners and stakeholders who have been involved in this project and have made it possible. NAMIRG has paved the way for more cooperation in this area and aims for other countries to join the team in the future. As Asta Mackieviciute from DG ECHO, who has been following NAMIRG achievements since its beginning said, “Our firefighters have experienced the group mechanism spirit by exercising together and it is important to remain a regional capacity and always get further training supported by the EU Institutions”.
