Red Cross Blogs

One day. 26 teams. 1,000 Red Cross volunteers

By Chris Jefferies
July 5, 2009 at 8:48 pm

We’re finally home after an exhausting, yet amazing, time at the First Aid Convention in Europe (FACE) 2009 held this year in Oldenburg, Germany. Yesterday saw the highlight of the convention, a first aid competition held in the city centre of Oldenburg.

The day began (quite painfully) at 5am. Of course we were sensible and had an early night, some teams however chose to party into the early hours and suffered in the morning!

Then came the scenarios, I can’t list them all but to give you a flavour we had:

• A van on fire after a gas explosion, we had to assist the German fire & rescue service. Personally I found this the most challenging; I had a casualty with major burns and not enough water to cool them. Our team leader then came up with the idea of using a fire hose to cool his injuries, genius!
• A drunken fishing expedition gone wrong. This ended up with a man falling into the river.
• An accident at a wedding procession involving a horse drawn carriage (With real living horses wandering around).

As you can see, there were such a wide variety of incidents! I’m sure many active imaginations were used to think them up. On top of this, the makeup and acting was superb.

Our team really enjoyed ourselves throughout the day, at times it was difficult especially in the heat but we kept our spirits high by singing at the top of our voices. We certainly got some funny looks from the inhabitants of Oldenburg!

The evening brought the much-anticipated awards ceremony. Out of 26 European teams, Team UK 1 (Scotland) came fifth and Team UK 2 (Surrey) came eighth. The winners this year were Serbia, who won for the fourth year in a row. Congratulations to them, they train exceptionally hard and deserved to win!

For me, the highlight of the day was the last scenario. We encountered a woman who had been hit by a bike and a baby who wasn’t breathing. Afterwards the head judge, a German doctor, said to our team:

“I wish I was as proficient in English as you are in first aid”.

Some things you never forget.

---

Comments (12) »

---

Tags: competition, FACE, First aid, Oldenburg

The Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 8:48 pm and is filed under First aid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---