80 passengers, rough seas and seconds that decide between life and death: Ustka rehearses a passenger-ship disaster

The Polish port of Ustka hosted a Mass Rescue Operation (MRO) exercise - a large-scale rescue in which the number of casualties exceeds the immediate response capacity of standard forces. More than 120 people took part in total: rescuers of the Maritime Search and Rescue Service (SAR), crews of the rescue units, medical personnel and students playing the role of casualties. The manoeuvres ran from mid-afternoon until dusk.

The scenario: evacuating the entire deck

The premise was unambiguous - an urgent evacuation of every passenger from a vessel in distress. The rescuers' task was to bring 80 simulated passengers ashore from the sinking ship. It is precisely this scale that makes an MRO a different league of rescue work: you are not saving one person but dozens at once, under time pressure and with limited resources.

- In maritime rescue there is no room for improvisation, and an operation in which you save dozens of people at once is the hardest test of that. The students saw up close that on a rough sea, beneath the rotor of a helicopter, what counts is a cool head and carrying out the task step by step, says Sebastian Kluska, director of the Maritime Search and Rescue Service (SAR).

A rescue fleet and a helicopter in action

The exercise drew on the Baltic's real rescue strength. On the water were the multipurpose vessel Kapitan Poinc and the rescue boats Orkan from Ustka and Tajfun from Darłowo; ashore, the shore rescue stations of Darłowo and Ustka. The role-players were recovered from the water in cooperation with the crews of other units and with paramedics, while operations unfolded simultaneously on the open sea, on the beach and on the quay of the Ustka port.

- Evacuating several dozen passengers from a sinking vessel is a race against time. You have to bring people ashore and, at the same time, decide who needs help first - and there is no room for a mistake, the SAR director stresses.

Medical students and triage in practice

Universities were a key partner of the exercise - the Pomeranian University in Słupsk and the Poznań University of Medical Sciences. Students of medical faculties had the chance to practise, hands-on, the principles of first aid in mass-casualty incidents, where a victim's life is often decided by seconds. The central element of their task was triage - the medical sorting that classifies casualties for further treatment, carried out both at sea and inside the vessels.

It is the participation of the role-players that gives such manoeuvres a realism impossible to recreate on paper: it brings the chaos, the emotion and the unpredictability of a real operation.

- I am glad that future medics stood alongside our rescuers. The real strength in an operation like this is not a single unit but a whole system in which everyone knows their place - from the deck, through the helicopter, to the quayside, Sebastian Kluska notes.

Why drills like this matter

A Mass Rescue Operation tests not so much the equipment as the coordination - communications and the smooth flow of casualties from the scene, through the units, all the way to medical care on land. In a real large-scale operation no single service acts alone.

- Safety at sea begins long before an accident - at the planning table, on exercises, in conversations about procedures. Human life is of the greatest value to us, and it is what is at stake in every operation like this, says the MSPiR SAR director.