The USAR team with which the Military Emergency Unit (UME) travels to Venezuela to help in the two earthquakes that have shaken the country is capable of deploying anywhere in the world in a matter of hours and, once on the ground, it can carry out search and rescue operations 24 hours a day for seven days.
An A330 plane of the Air and Space Army, which took off early this Friday from the Torrejón air base, in the Community of Madrid, transports 59 members of the Second Emergency Intervention Battalion of the UME, based in Morón de la Frontera (Seville), and eight of its canine units to support search and rescue tasks, as reported by the Ministry of Defense.
The team is made up of specialists in search, rescue, logistics, health, command and coordination, and its capacity is based on the combination of the use of specially trained dogs as well as specific electronic devices, such as rescue cameras, geophones, UWB sensors and drones.
To act in collapsed structures, they have the necessary training and equipment to carry out shoring, cutting and drilling operations, vertical rescue, rescue in confined spaces, movement and lifting of large loads.
The USAR has a health element made up of doctors, nurses and technicians prepared for the stabilization and extraction of victims trapped under the debris, as well as to assist the members of the team who are affected during operations.
The UME team also has command and control specialists with more advanced computer, transmission and communications technical means, both for carrying out its own operations and for coordination with local and international authorities.
Logistics, according to Defense, is essential in these situations, so the team is self-sufficient on the ground for seven days and has camping and accommodation facilities to deploy anywhere in the world.
Extensive experience
Since the creation of the UME in 2005, its USAR team has been deployed to assist in the earthquakes in Haiti (2010), Nepal (2015), Ecuador (2016), Mexico (2017) and Turkey (2023). In Spain it intervened in the Lorca earthquake (Murcia) in 2011 and in the collapse of Los Cristianos (Tenerife) in 2016.
In December 2011, the USAR of the UME passed the certification process that enables it to form an Urban Search and Rescue team according to the standards standardized by INSARAG, the international network that operates under the umbrella of the UN.
In May 2016 and in November 2023 the team once again passed the reclassification, which is mandatory every five years, which allows it until 2028.
