Saturday 24th May 2025 Carlow County Fire & Rescue Service had a team compete in the National Rescue Organisation Ireland (ROI) Competition at Dublin Fire Brigades OBI Training Centre. SSO Danial Fitzpatrick, FF Ronan Boyle, FF Artur Bienko (Carlow Fire Station), SSO Eddie O’Hara, FF Andrew Fisher & FF Nial Foster (Bagenalstown Fire Station). The team competed in two challenging staged Road Traffic Collisions scenarios involving live casualties trapped in the vehicles as well as two Trauma scenarios again involving live casualties presenting various traumatic injuries. The team were assessed for their performance in Incident Management, Health & Safety, Technical Extrication and Medical interventions. Carlow County Fire & Rescue Service competed against teams from Dublin Fire Brigade, Kildare Fire Service, Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Service, Civil Defence Units and teams that travelled from Luxembourg and Belgium.
Overall Carlow County Fire & Rescue Service placed second in the competition and achieved first place with FF Ronan Boyle in the CPR event. A/Chief Fire Officer Ben Woodhouse: ‘Our team have been putting a lot of time and effort preparing for this event and to represent our County Fire & Rescue Service at a National level. I’m very proud of their performance competing at this high level and wish to congratulate and acknowledge the efforts of all team members and the support given to them in their preparation by SO Darrell Hayden (Carlow Fire Station), Retired Carlow Town SO John Comerford and Retired HSE NAS Paramedic Mick Tobin. Not only do the team get to put their skills to the test in a national competition but these skills also translate to Fire Station level when our crews respond to real emergencies using their skills, our fleet and equipment helping those in need involved in RTC’s.’