Joburg EMS team vies for SA’s top public safety award

14 August 2015

 

The City of Johannesburg’s Emergency Management Services’ team based in Jabulani, Soweto, that spearheaded the dramatic rescue of 18 people buried under the rubble of a collapsed building near the Orlando Cooling Towers in June 2014, is among a short list of teams poised to clinch this year’s Centrum Guardians of the Year Award.

 

Voting for the prestigious prize, which enters its seventh year this year, closes on Thursday August 20. The accolade is widely regarded as the ultimate recognition of public safety service excellence in South Africa. The winners will be announced on August 25.

 

Johannesburg residents can show their support by placing their votes on the www.centrumguardian.com website.

 

The award was introduced by Centrum® Multivitamins, a subsidiary of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, in 2008 as a way of giving the emergency management services fraternity in South Africa deserved recognition for the difficult, highly specialised and often dangerous work the crews perform on a daily basis. Centrum Guardians has since grown into one of the most important events on the calendar of the search and rescue arena in the country.

 

The public has a 50% say on which one of the finalists should clinch the title. The other 50% say has been allocated to an independent media panel. Nana Radebe, Spokesperson for Johannesburg Disaster Management and Emergency Management Services, has explained how Team Joburg won the Centrum Guardians nomination.

She says after arriving on the scene at 7am on 25 June 2014, the crew worked swiftly to treat, stabilise and transport the first patient to hospital. They then deftly navigated collapsed concrete and steel beams in search for more survivors.

 

The football-sized partially collapsed building was extremely “unstable and unsafe”. But the crew kept their cool and succeeded in successfully evacuating more survivors.

Other stakeholders that joined the operation were Advanced Life Support, Heavy Vehicle Support, and search and rescue units from Ekurhuleni Metro and West Rand District Municipality as well as of K9, Riga K9 and ER24. Trauma doctors and anaesthetists from the University of Johannesburg also joined the operation.