Bruce Reid News

Lifejackets have been donated by ActionAid to the International Maritime Rescue Federation to send to the Mediterranean to help adults and children who need rescuing on a daily basis. The 300 lifejackets – 150 for adults and the rest for children – will be sent to Sea-Watch in Malta who are performing rescues and who are in desperate need of lifejackets for children and babies. To boost the supply of lifejackets an online fundraising campaign to ‘keep children afloat in the Mediterranean’  is being set up by the IMRF to raise funds for its member NGOs so infant and baby size lifejackets can be made available. The IMRF’s member organisations, who are maritime search and rescues NGOs working in this region, urgently need children’s lifejackets to ensure that lives are saved.

For the fifth consecutive year, rescue volunteers from European nations are to participate next week in a seven day Lifeboat Crew Exchange Program organized by the International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF). The well-established program will include representatives from 13 countries and nine will host a full exchange seven days in their respective locations with each country able to send seven crew members each going to a different country. They will share experiences and…

A new lifeboat station has been opened on the Greek island of Chios – with the cooperation of International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF) members – to help support the rescue of migrants in the Aegean. The Lifeboat station was made possible through a partnership between Koninklijke Nederlandse Redding Maatschappij (KNRM), the maritime search and rescue service from the Netherlands, and the Hellenic Rescue Team (HRT), and with the support of the Maria Tsakos Foundation along with community leaders and local volunteers. At an event to celebrate the opening of the centre – which was completed in only three months – two lifeboat vessels donated by the KNRM, Athena and Arina to be deployed on the surrounding waters, were also christened.

The International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF) is to strengthen the capacity and effectiveness of the Hellenic Rescue Team (HRT), an IMRF member organization which is constantly rescuing migrants in the Aegean Sea. The IMRF will do this with the support of European maritime search and rescue (SAR) organizations who are also IMRF members. Following a temporary drop in the number of people trying to reach the Greek islands by sea in November, figures from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) are showing an increase again.

Recent reports that some would-be rescuers do not fully understand the legal context of rescue at sea, and may have been deterred from helping people in distress because of possible legal action by local authorities seeking to counter trafficking activity are misplaced, according to the International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF). Bruce Reid, IMRF’s Chief Executive Officer, says: “Great work is being done by professional rescue crews from all over Europe, coordinated by our friends in the Italian and Hellenic Coast Guards, with the assistance too of SAR colleagues in Malta and Turkey.

Mediterranean Rescue Services are in urgent need of support because they are struggling to keep up with the replacement of equipment being used to rescue the increasing numbers of migrants in their waters and have contacted the International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF) for help. In response, the IMRF is relaunching its ‘Members Assisting Members’ webpage to help identify the need and enable connection to the 2,500 contacts on the database that may be able to help. The three…

The IMRF, the charity supporting maritime SAR service globally, and McMurdo, a company in search and rescue and maritime domain awareness solutions, announced a partnership aiming at several key search and rescue (SAR) initiatives to be launched at next week’s World Maritime Rescue Congress in Bremerhaven, Germany. Working together the IMRF and McMurdo will target some of the key challenges facing maritime SAR globally including rescue team training, the safety of artisanal fishermen and the emerging requirements of SAR services managing the unsafe mixed migration by sea.

On June 1, a mass rescue simulation exercise using Transas Navigational simulator NTPRO 5000 took place within the International Maritime Mass Rescue Conference 2014 held by the International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF). The conference was hosted by the Swedish Sea Rescue Society (SSRS). More than 100 participants gathered at simulator facilities of the Chalmers Universty of Technology (Sweden) and the Swedish Maritime Administration. Both organizations use the latest Transas navigational simulator NTPRO 5000.

Some relatives of the more than 200 children missing in a sunken South Korean ferry offered DNA swabs on Saturday to help identify the dead as the rescue turned into a mission to recover the vessel and the bodies of those on board. The Sewol, carrying 476 passengers and crew, capsized on Wednesday on a journey from the port of Incheon to the southern holiday island of Jeju. Thirty-two people are known to have died. The 69-year-old captain, Lee Joon-seok, was arrested in the early hours of Saturday on charges of negligence along with two other crew members, including the third mate who was steering at the time of the capsize. Prosecutors later said the mate was steering the Sewol through the waters where it listed and capsized - for the first time in her career.

Fishermen with poor communications and safety equipment are one of the main reasons for search and rescue (SAR) call-outs off the coasts of North and West Africa. This was one of the main issues raised at the North West African meeting of the International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF) recently held in Gran Canaria. As well as representatives from the region several European SAR organisations also attended. The meeting was told that along the coast of Senegal alone there are some 13,000 artisanal fishermen, who often are not equipped to alert the authorities if they get into trouble.

A seven day Lifeboat Crew Exchange Program involving rescue volunteers from nine countries has proved to be a fulfilling training exercise for all 55 participants. With the aim of exchanging knowledge, sharing ideas and building relationships between the voluntary institutions, the project is designed to help reduce the number of people losing their lives in Europe’s waters. Instigated by the International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF) and the Search and Rescue (SAR) organization KNRM from the Netherlands, the program has four clear objectives.