State Central Aeromobile Rescue Detachment of Russian Emergency Situations Ministry Turns 11

The State Central Aeromobile Rescue Detachment (Tsentrospas) of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry (MChS) is turning eleven. It was formed on March 13th, 1992, by a resolution of the government and is designed to carry out rescue and search operations in any emergency situation. RIA Novosti was told as much in the Information Directorate of the MChS of the Russian Federation.

Tsentrospas works in the regime of daily round-the-clock duty at a base near the aerodrome in Ramenskoye (the Moscow Region). Its staffers are ready to fly to the place of an emergency situation at any moment to give assistance to people. Last year 3,329 rescue flights were performed, the MChS officials noted. The rescuers helped and evacuated 10,752 people, saved 368 people, and extracted the bodies of 437 dead people from under the debris.

The list of the operations carried out by Tsentrospas last year included assistance to the population of Afghanistan, the work at the Baikonur cosmodrome in a building whose roof collapsed, and the after-flood assistance to Germany. In Russia, Tsentrospas rescuers worked during the disastrous flood in the Southern federal district, eliminated the consequences of a storm in Novorossiisk and of the descent of an avalanche in North Ossetia, and worked after the collapse of an apartment block in St. Petersburg, during the seizure of hostages in Dubrovka in Moscow and after the terrorist act near the Chechen House of Government in Grozny.