Category Archives: Videos

SAR: Volcano Llamatepeq, Santa Ana

At 1025pm, dispatch recieved a call requesting the Comandos Search and Rescue team in order to help find 23 people who had gotten lost while hiking the Santa Ana Volcano. The Central Base SAR group and a small EMS unit was dispatched along with support from cds delegate bases of Apopa and El Congo.

23 CDS  members arrived to the scene and coordinated with other SAR members of the Salvadoran Red Cross. The location of the hiking group was finalized at 445am. Treatment included attending to possible hypothermia yet none presented with any acute injuries or symptoms.  At 53oam, descent operations of the patients started. The operation ended safely at 930am. More information in Spanish here.

Acute Motorcycle Accident

Comandos attended a patient that was involved in a motorcycle accident in Colonia Escalón this afternoon. The patient presented with acute and fatal head injuries. The driver of the car was unharmed. This video presents the mechanism of injury. Viewer discretion is advised.

Credit: Journalist David Urias,  Grupo Megavisión Canal 21 y Youtuber Ricardomanzur27 for the source.

Civil War 1981

On January 10th 1981, the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberación Nacional started what they called their “final offensive” against a revolutionary military Junta “coup d’etat” that had recently taken over the Salvadoran government. The objective of the FMLN was to over thrown the coup before the taking of the presidency in the USA by Ronald Reagan which occurred the 20th of January of the same year.

The Comandos de Salvamento are documented during this offensive in the new documentary Return to El Salvador by director Jamie Moffet. Together with the Green Cross, they evacuate an FMLN patient involved in a shootout with the Army during the offensive. Upon leaving the scene with Green Cross, the ambulance was stopped at an army roadblock and the patient shot. CDS has numerous EMS experiences during the war, and also during times of peace working separate or along side their EMS comrades from other agencies like the Green and Red Cross.