Some 60 passengers on board an Aran Island ferry were "saved" off the Galway coast this week after the vessel caught fire in a collision with a Spanish trawler. However, the "rescue" could have been seriously hampered by over-enthusiastic use of radio communications.
The "rescue" was an exercise and part of the Western Health Board's millennium bug preparations.
The "passengers", complete with made-up burns, were members of the Defence Forces from Renmore Barracks in Galway, and the vessel was the Aran Flyer provided by Island Ferries. The alert was not confined to the "collision". As part of the exercise, there was also a power failure, a radio failure, a medical device failure and a telephones failure.
Monitoring the response of the various agencies, ranging from the Irish Marine Emergency Service to the Civil Defence and the WHB ambulance service, were independent assessors in a Garda helicopter and on the ground. A debriefing is to be held within the week.
Mr Joe Foy, chief ambulance officer with the WHB, said the main glitch identified was an overuse of radio communications.
Tighter co-ordination would improve the operation of the contingency plan, he said. However, he said that he was very pleased with the response of all the participants, particularly the Rossaveal harbour master; the exercise had put the Rossaveal harbour and Galway joint emergency services incident plan to the test, he said.
Ambulance crews focused on colour tagging of survivors - tagging patients by the urgency of treatment required.
The WHB ambulance service is the first in Ireland to initiate a disaster management kit which aims to create order out of chaos by applying this triage system.
The WHB input to the Mayo county emergency plan was also tested over two months ago when a fire broke out in a factory in Belmullet and 700 people were evacuated from their homes. Some 45 firemen fought the blaze and ambulances from three counties rushed to the scene.
