Shelter, Food and Medical Assistance for Lorca

Beatriz Gonzalo/Madrid

The Army has been involved in aid to victims of the earthquake experienced yesterday by the locality of Lorca in Murcia, where modular tents with bunk beds are being set up to accommodate those residents who are unable to return to their homes, as well as by offering medical assistance to the injured.
In charge of the first task are personnel from the 73rd Anti-aircraft Artillery Regiment, 3rd Paratroops Battalion “Ortiz de Zárate” and the Legion Brigade, who have taken nearly a hundred tents and 400 bunk beds (25 of them triples) to the locality’s football pitch.  As well, there is capability to prepare food for some 600 people per day. 
The 1st Medical Group is going to install a field medical formation with an operating theatre, six intensive care beds, a stabilisation team with blood transfusion capability and an initial capacity of 20 hospital beds.  In addition it has a veterinary section, a psychological team, and two ambulances equipped for advanced life support.  In all, there are 50 personnel among surgeons, anaesthesiologists, orthopaedic surgeons, intensivists and nurses.
In turn, the 1st Transport Group, with 13 of their trailered VEMPAR special multipurpose supply and recuperation vehicles, took charge of transporting Military Disaster Relief Unit materiel from Madrid, where their Headquarters and logistic unit are located, to Murcia. There, from the afternoon of 11th May, the Military Disaster Relief Unit has had 150 members deployed —mainly from the 3rd Emergency Intervention Battalion— in order to collaborate in search and rescue labours.

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