The government delegate to the Community of Madrid, Francisco Martín Aguirre, received today the lieutenant colonel of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), Alfonso Arribas Lucas. He will be appointed head of the first Intervention Battalion of the Military Emergency Unit by the hand of Lieutenant Colonel Alberto Modino Iturralde. The meeting was also attended by the head of the Civil Protection Unit, Fabián Bejerano and the deputy lieutenant José Rubio, who serves the lieutenant colonels of the UME.
During his personal career he has been chief commander of the Airborne Brigade. In addition, it was destined for emergencies such as the earthquake in Turkey in February 2023, where it attended along with 54 other UME soldiers. There, he worked in the Gaziantep area, in extreme weather conditions (5ºC maximum and -8ºC minimum). In the rescue operations they managed to save dozens of people alive, but they also found many dead. For the device they had kinological equipment (with dogs) specialized in the search of living people (3 dogs) and in deceased people (1 dog).
The First Emergency Intervention Battalion (BIEM I) is the fundamental unit that the EMU has in order to carry out the assigned missions in its area of responsibility (AOR). This unit of the UME can cope with all kinds of situations in which the life or integrity of people and their property, the environment, natural spaces and their resources and the historical-artistic heritage, can be affected, in accordance with the provisions of the Protocol of Intervention of the Unit.