Catalan firemen are working on a pioneer European location device to find trapped victims

Gavà (ACN).- The Catalan Government’s Fire Department is working as part of a European research group to design a pioneering location device to find victims buried in a landslide. The prototype has a telemedicine device that can detect the vital signs of a person simply by coming into contact with the skin, an odour detector that responds to the smell emitted by a living person, an audio system that can discriminate between the sounds emitted by a trapped person and any other noise and two cameras that can fit into the gaps left by the debris. The Firemen Deputy Inspector Jordi Bosch said however that dogs will remain indispensable in the future. On Tuesday a simulation rescue was carried out in Gavà (Baix Llobregat County, within Barcelona’s Metropolitan Area).

Professor of the Faculty of Computer Science at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Felipe Fernández explained that the Catalan Government’s Fire Department were one of the two European bodies involved in the emergency technology project. The other onw is the CEREN in Marsella. Not only will it lead to new developments in practice but the two fire departments can "also actively collaborate in the design" of the technology, said Fernández. Their input will provide a "guide" for the team of researchers he says.

The project aims to complete in one or two years a new locator to discover victims buried after a building collapse or natural disaster. The aim is to equip rescue teams with new instruments. A small stick, thanks to advances in telemedicine, is able to accurately report the vital signs of a person when it comes into contact with any part of the skin.

The device is also equipped with a triple tracking system. The first consists of chemical sensors that can detect gases, such as carbon dioxide, and urine from the body. The second is able to discriminate between the sounds produced by a living person and the noises coming from underground, for example, a drip of a broken pipe. The third has two cameras, one of them thermal, which can pass between small cracks in the rubble.

Deputy Inspector Jordi Bosch explained that the new device will find people trapped "more quickly". Advances in technology do not however change the value or the use of dogs in these tasks. "Their detection capability is enormous, and they also weigh very little; and if something bad happens to them, we'll feel very sorry, but they are less worthy than a human life, which is priceless" he said.