Stuart Lowth of Coastguard New Zealand writes:

Coastguard Eastern Region recently hosted, on behalf of Coastguard New Zealand, a visit from Lieutenant Rodrigo Fiorentini. Rodrigo is a member of Maritime Fire Brazil, the Coastguard NZ equivalent. His unit operates in the state of São Paulo.

The objective of his stay in New Zealand was to see various types of vessels used by Coastguard and how Coastguard’s common training matrix and SAR procedures are robust enough to work with any SAR platform. A variety of vessels were utilised including a Naiad RHIB with standard outboards, Tauranga Volunteer Coastguard’s TECT Rescue, which is a 13m Catamaran with jet propulsion units, and the East Pack Rescue at Maketu which is an 11.7m Robson 345 Alloy Craft also powered by jet units.

The Maritime Fire Service in Brazil incorporates not only maritime SAR but also work which is carried out by a number of other agencies in New Zealand so we worked with our SAR partners in other emergency services to showcase how New Zealand operates during multi-agency events. Rodrigo also had the opportunity to walk through a live scenario which involved our Incident Management Team and the operational wet crew following the Coordinated Incident Management System (CIMS) in line with New Zealand SAR protocol.

Of course no visit to New Zealand would be complete without a visit to the world-renowned thermal activity located in Rotorua which also gave Rodrigo the opportunity to have a taste of New Zealand culture. It has been an absolute honour to host Rodrigo and to have the opportunity to extend the experience of both countries’ services through practical simulations and the sharing of knowledge of our training and SAR systems.

Photo: Rodrigo at the helm of a Coastguard NZ rescue boat