Eli has been a volunteer on the Bergondo Civil Protection Group (A Coruña) for 23 years. She dedicates her life, full-time, to serving to others with out receiving any sort of remuneration in return. This February tenth she can be awarded the Medal to the Civil Protection Merit of the Ministry of the Interior
If one thing occurs in Bergondo (A Coruña), she is there. In a parade of Three Kings or in a sporting occasion. In a site visitors accident or in a fireplace. Oliva García Trasancos (Ribadeo, 1971), higher often called Oli, is at all times out there to assist others.
She has been a volunteer within the Civil Protection Group of this Coruña municipality for 23 years. A job that she does full time and with out receiving any sort of remuneration in return. “For me it is my lifestyle,” she explains.
Married and with a son of authorized age, this selfless dedication has compelled her to cancel journeys and even have to depart an occasion in a rush as a result of an emergency. Because her cellphone is at all times lively. 24 hours. The 12 months of the 12 months.
Now that selfless dedication goes to be acknowledged. This February 10, Oli can be awarded the Civil Protection Medal of Merit, a badge that the Ministry of the Interior awards to folks and organizations which have stood out for his or her distinctive actions in defending folks in emergency conditions.
Since then, this volunteer, a lot liked by her neighbors, has not stopped receiving congratulations. “I nonetheless do not know who proposed me for this,” she admits. But she claims to be comfortable for her recognition of her work.
The Civil Protection Association, his household
When requested what number of hours of her life she spends volunteering, Oli laughs. “Many, many. My life is devoted to Civil Protection and to my household. But my household can also be in Civil Protection, so think about, ”she says. She says it as a result of her son and her husband are additionally a part of the group.
Oliva obtained final November the Silver Medal for Merit in Civil Protection from the Xunta de Galicia.
Oli started as a volunteer within the Bergondo Civil Protection Association in 1999. She was nonetheless working then and had simply grow to be a mom. Her son was solely three months previous. “I began by likelihood. Volunteers had been wanted for a sporting occasion and I signed up,” she says.
Today it’s she who’s answerable for the Association, which has 32 volunteers. Normally, she spends each morning on the base, ready for any issues, and the remainder of the day she is “on location”.
His everyday relies on fixing issues that come up with the neighbors. Fires, site visitors accidents, searches for lacking individuals… They seem in your pocket book of commonest interventions.
Volunteer in Angrois, the Prestige or in La Palma
But Oli has additionally been a volunteer in essentially the most excellent occasions which have taken place in Galicia within the final twenty years. In the fires of 2006, within the Prestige, within the Aegean Sea or within the Angrois prepare accident. She has additionally traveled to La Palma to assist these affected throughout the eruption of the volcano.
“Angrois is the intervention that has marked me essentially the most. What I noticed there, on the foot of the monitor, I’ll always remember in my life ”, he explains. That day she was ready to take part within the fireworks of the Apostle, however she ended up collaborating in essentially the most severe prepare accident in current historical past.
But in his reminiscence there are a lot of humorous anecdotes. Like a Christmas Eve through which they needed to drop every thing to intervene for a donkey that had turned up misplaced. “Given the impossibility of finding his proprietor, we took him to the bottom singing ‘A donkey goes to Bethlehem,'” Oli recollects with amusing. Also many comfortable endings. “Like after we’ve discovered lacking folks alive,” he explains.
She is aware of higher than anybody that emergencies come on the most sudden instances. “Once, a few years in the past, I left a marriage in heels and dressed to an accident. In the previous, in lots of city halls, there have been neither firefighters nor municipal cops and we needed to go assist ourselves”, she recollects.
“In the tip you adapt your life to this. You are the one who decides to be right here, no person forces you, ”she explains. “People who aren’t within the collective see it as one thing surreal, they suppose we’re ‘jammed’, however emotionally this makes up for it,” he concludes.