French Red Plan - General Concept

General Concept

In case of a red plan, it is necessary to simultaneously:

• fight the initial disaster and its direct and indirect consequences;
• extract the casualties from the hostile environment;
• care for the casualties.

Due to the complexity of these three missions, two command chains are formed, under the authority of the "commander of the rescue operations" (COS: commandant des opérations de secours) : the fire-and-rescue chain, and the medical chain:

• the fire-and-rescue chain has the charge to fight the initial disaster; the rescuers are entirely devoted to this task, and participate to the search and rescue, locating the casualties, extraction/extrication of the casualties and possibly perform first aid onsite;
• the medical chain has three functions:
  • the first aid onsite, casualty lifting (scoop) and movement from the disaster location to the field hospital (called "advanced medical post", or PMA: poste médical avancé);
  • triage and stabilising the casualties for the evacuation;
  • the evacuation of the casualties to adapted care structures (hospitals).