Major search at Loughshinny – 9th September 2009

At 21:25 this evening, the Irish Coast Guard’s marine rescue coordination centre (MRCC) paged the volunteers of Skerries Coast Guard to an incident at Loughshinny, some four miles South of Skerries. Balbriggan Gardai has requested assistance from the Coast Guard with a major search operation at a remote location in Loughshinny. Gardai had received a report that a young person may be in difficulty and requiring assistance in the area of the Loughshinny Martello Tower.

The Skerries Coast Guard rescue team arrived at the scene within minutes and met with the Gardai on scene. Given the search area included cliffs, trenches and difficult scrub land the Coast Guard’s Sikorsky rescue helicopter, Rescue 116, was deployed from its nearby base at Dublin Airport to assist with the search. With several Coast Guard rescue teams on the ground and the helicopter using its powerful NightSun searchlight and infra-red camera, the entire area was thoroughly searched, however nothing unusual was found. All teams were subsequently stood down.

Incident # 18 of 2009

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Helicopter training

This morning, the volunteers of Skerries Coast Guard undertook regular training with the Coast Guard Sikorsky S-61N Rescue helicopter at Red Island, Skerries. This involved selecting and preparing the Red Island landing site, with excellent weather conditions prevailing on scene.

The volunteers received a refresher ground briefing on all operational aspects of the Coast Guard helicopter and its capabilities.

Several volunteers took part in a familiarisation flight along the Coast towards the Skerries team’s Northern SAR boundary of Laytown.

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Training with Coast Guard helicopter

At dawn this morning, the Skerries Coast Guard team held their first training event of 2009, a joint rescue exercise with one of the Coast Guard’s Sikorsky helicopters, callsign EI-MES. The Skerries team selected and prepared the landing zone at Red Island, near to Skerries harbour.

Weather conditions were favourable, with good visibility and freshening Southerly winds. All of the Skerries Coast Guard team had an opportunity to experience a flight in the helicopter.

Further rescue training took place on St. Patrick’s island, one of the three uninhabited islands off the coast of Skerries.

Once again, our thanks to the Dublin Coast Guard helicopter crew for a fantastic joint training exercise.

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Night Helicopter Landing Exercise – Skerries

This evening, Volunteers from Skerries Coast Guard took part in a training exercise with the Irish Coast Guard helicopter, call sign EI-RCG.

The object of the exercise was to facilitate a helicopter landing under cover of darkness

A landing site was selected on Red Island, Skerries and the volunteers quickly cordoned, prepared and set up the designated landing site. The Irish Coast Guard helicopter (EI-RCG) made their approach and performed a brief landing, simulated casualty evacuation and departure.

The Coast Guard helicopter did some demonstration of their night time illumination equipment or “Night Sun”. This is used for night searches or night approaches for landing the aircraft. The Night Sun is remotely controlled by a crewman from within the helicopter and has a strength of 30 million candlepower.

Some of the Skerries volunteers also had a brief look at how the Helicopter crew uses F.L.I.R (Forward Looking Infra Red) technology to locate persons using thermal imagery.  

Weather conditions on scene were fair with a cold, light to moderate SW breeze.

Our thanks to the crew of EI-RCG for another professional job well done!

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