Sardinal Will Have New Ambulance Thanks To
Japanese Donation
(InfoWebPress) As a sign of solidarity with
the work the Costa Rican Red Cross carries
out in favor of the most needy, the Japanese
Ambassador to San José, Hidekazu Yamaguchi,
presented a donation of three ambulances to
the Red Cross committees in Laurel and
Buenos Aires (Southern Zone) and Sardinal
(Guanacaste) — in addition to a
all-wheel-drive rescue unit that will be
assigned to the Metropolitan Emergency and
Rescue Service (COMSER).
During the ceremony, which was held Aug. 25
at the Costa Rican Red Cross headquarters in
San Jose, the fully equipped vehicles —
valued at 100 million colones ($176,000) —
were officially handed over to the
humanitarian organization.
Ambassador Yamaguchi recalled that the Costa
Rican Red Cross has been the beneficiary of
hundreds of projects the Japanese Embassy
has been involved in here in the past 17
years.
“Our cooperation is a small grain of sand
compared with the magnitude of the
responsibility you carry, but I’m sure that
both the rescue unit and the three
ambulances will be employed as much as
possible to continue the work of providing
services to those in need,” Yamaguchi said.
Miguel Carmona, president of the Costa Rican
Red Cross, pointed out that the real
beneficiaries of this contribution will be
the thousands of residents from the Southern
Zone, Guanacaste and the Central Valley who
will be impacted by the donation. In San
Jose’s metropolitan area alone, more than 1
million people and 120,000 vehicles
circulate every day during the work week.
The ceremony wrapped up the agreement signed
between the Red Cross and the Japanese
Embassy as part of the program “Assistance
for Project and Citizen Security,” which
benefited four Red Cross committees in total
and will strengthen the work of these
institution in several communities.
Each ambulance comes with a stretcher,
oxygen tank, siren, speakers and radio
communicators. The rescue unit, meanwhile,
is also outfitted with equipment for car
crash and vertical rescue.
This donation adds to the availability of
emergency equipment in Guanacaste. Recently,
Liberia’s Daniel Oduber International
Airport received three new fire trucks.
The firefighting units were acquired through
a contract entered into by the Costa Rican
government and the Oshkosh-OACI company
(associated with the International Civil
Aviation Organization). The units are of the
Striker model, with four of them having
capacity for 3,000 gallons of water and the
remaining three being able to hold 1,500
gallons of water each. Two of the seven
units have an extension arm that allows them
to inject water and foam into large
aircraft, such as Boeing 747 and Airbus
A340.
Additionally, these vehicles carry special
equipment such as video cameras, infrared
cameras (in the two units with extension
arms), portable infrared cameras that allow
to scan the inside of plans to detect heat,
portable hydraulic “jaws of life,” chemical
foam, compressed air cylinders,
troubleshooting software, stretchers, safety
vests, rescue equipment, and others. |
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