->The 2024 Car Accident Extrication Challenge by the National Fire Agency (NFA) was a complete success.

On 2024/08/29 and 2024/08/30, the 2024 Car Accident Extrication Challenge was held by the National Fire Agency (NFA) at Zhushan Training Center in Nantou. On 2024/08/29, the Challenge was kicked off with an opening ceremony chaired by Director-General HSIAO of NFA before the competition was officially rolled out. A total of 12 teams present, including eleven (11) domestic teams from local municipal and county (city) fire departments and one (1) Japanese teams, to compete in the largest car accident extrication event, all striving for the best results. After 24 fierce competition items in 2 days, it came to a successful conclusion on 2024/08/30. The final results were released: The Taoyuan Car Accident Extrication Team of the Taoyuan City Government Fire Department, the Deyin Elite Search Team of the New Taipei Government Fire Department, and the Kaohsiung Escape Rescue Team (KERT) of the Kaohsiung City Fire Department respectively ranked the top 3 teams. In addition, the Deyin Elite Search Team won the Best Command Award; the Taoyuan Car Accident Extrication Team won the Best Rescue Care Award; and many others won the Best Spirit Awards, namely the Japanese team TIRAEMT, the Elite Team of the Keelung City Fire Department, the team of Taipei City Government Fire Department (TFD), the Soaring Flying Dragon Team of the Miaoli County Government Fire Department, the team of Taichung City Government Fire Department, the Meinan Feet Team of Nantou County Government Fire Department (NTFD), the Reborn South Firefighters Team of Tainan City Government Fire Department, the team of Hualien County Fire Department, and the Sharp Eastern Team of Taitung County Fire Department.

As per the National Fire Agency (NFA), the rules for this competition were based on the five (5) major steps of car accident extrication, namely "observation, safety, approaching, space making, and escape" to achieve the extrication goals of safety and efficiency, with an emphasis on five (5) indicators, namely "command and teamwork", "safety", and "extrication technique", "Pre-hospital rescue care " and "apparatus application", covering three (3) scoring items, namely “command”, “extrication skills”, and “medical assessment”. The scenarios applied in this Challenge were planned with reference to the scoring guide for the World Extrication Challenge held by the World Rescue Organization (WRO) to include two (2) scenarios, namely "Standard Extrication" and "Complex Extrication". All teams must participate in the 2 scenarios. In the "Standard Extrication" scenario, participating teams must extricate one injured person within 20 minutes. In the "Complex Extrication" scenario, the participating teams must extricate 2 injured people within 30 minutes. In comparison with the "Standard Extrication" scenario, the "Complex Extrication" involve more complex car accident and injury situations to be dealt with.

In every scenario, each participating team worked hard to show their proficient extrication skills and team tacit, which was worthy of affirmation, also in line with the purpose of this event, i.e. “to improve rescue efficiency by mutually observing each other's extrication skills, while improving the safety of the injured and the rescue personnel”.

In addition to this event, another activity “Exhibition of Equipment and Apparatuses for Car Accident Extrication and Rescue Care” was held simultaneously around the venue of the event, where relevant domestic suppliers in the field of car accident extrication and rescue care have set up their exhibition booths, so that members from all participating teams could, apart from observing and learning vehicle extrication skills from each other, also learned about the latest development of rescue equipment from various suppliers, provided their practical experience and needs in disaster relief, so that suppliers could can develop newer and better disaster relief equipment and apparatuses, thus jointly improving fire rescue technology and rescue efficiency.

At last, as per the National Fire Agency (NFA), the 2024 Car Accident Extrication Challenge came to a successful conclusion, with the support and cooperation from all the participating teams of the municipal and county (city) government fire departments, the organizers “Rescue Technology Innovation and Consultant Association of Taiwan”, the co-organizers “Taiwan Fire Development Foundation” and “Taiwan Development Association for Disaster Medical Teams (TDADMT)”, Chenly International Co., Ltd., all suppliers participating in the exhibition, as well as all referees and staff responsible for the event’s command, extrication skills, and medical assessment.

Group photo at the closing ceremony

No. 1 - Taoyuan Car Accident Rescue Team of the Taoyuan City Government Fire Department