Decisions For Heroes Blog

Working with rescue teams around the world, we get sent some incredible photos of heroic rescue situations. As heroic as they may be, none stopped us in our tracks like D4H users in San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office Cliff-Dive-Marine Unit who sent over photos of “SPARROW-1″, their electric response vehicle!

Based near San Francisco, their ‘piece de resistance’ the Sparrow electric car was donated to the team. They repainted it, put a light bar and siren on it, and even fitted it out with a two way radio!

Powered by 13 x 80 amp 12 volt batteries on essentially a golf cart chassis it can get up to 100Km/hour. There are about 30 left in the world and now mainly used by the team for parades.

Brilliant!

(Images owned by and used with permission from San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office Cliff-Dive-Marine Unit)

Listen to Claudia Hammond researching the psychology of team dynamics by interviewing the London Air Ambulance as they are called out to the scene of a teenage stabbing.

Prof Rhona Flin from the University of Aberdeen studies group dynamics in the emergency services. How does this team manage to make decisions quickly and effectively?

CHICAGO, UNITED STATES - Avon and Somerset Police in the UK have taken a leap and published hoax 999 calls on YouTube. They claim to receive over 400 a year, blocking their phone lines for real emergencies. This effort of putting the recordings online is an attempt to show people what a complete waste of time hoax calls are.

It is great to see emergency services adopting the internet like this.

You can subscribe to their channel here, or have a listen to this selection of calls:

“There’s a squirrel with no hazelnuts”

“To complain about very sore feet, due to no buses.”

“An injured pigeon.”

Great stuff. What hoax’s have your team been tasked to?

CHICAGO, UNITED STATES (Decisions For Heroes) - A brilliant story from Reuters in Germany…

Firefighters called to a blaze at an apartment building in a southern German town were astonished to discover a fully equipped extremely drunk imposter in their ranks, police said on Thursday.

On hearing the alarm, the 38-year-old man had rushed to the fire station, was helped into protective clothing and helmet by unsuspecting firefighters and boarded the fire engine, a spokesman for Suedhessen police said.

Continue Reading

-Robin

CHICAGO, UNITED STATES - Photos taken from my desk this morning as a builder is evacuated from the Trump Tower in Chicago with what looked like spinal injuries.

More photos in the Heroes Flickr Set.