This week the relay in Maritime Rescue has been completed. Roberto Pereira has taken possession how new head of the service in A Coruña, replacing Jesús Iglesias, who is retiring after more than 25 years as head of rescue in the maritime control tower of the shelter dock. The two have been on the Hoy por Hoy A Coruña program on Radio Coruña Cadena SER.
Roberto Pereira made contact with the control tower with the Prestige tanker accident. He was assigned to A Coruña as a reinforcement of the maritime rescue team that was managing the accident and trying not to turn it into an environmental catastrophe. He underlines the advances in maritime safety since that accident: “The Urquiola, then the Aegean Sea, the Prestige, between accident and accident there were between 10 and 12 years, now this distance has doubled and we have already been many more years, the management and means it has nothing to do with those years. “
Jesus Iglesias, the now retired rescue chief, recalled on the Radio Coruña program that moment of the Prestige accident. With the passage of time, he admits that in the first hours and first days those who participate in the device were not aware that that tanker accident would turn into an environmental disaster that would last in time.
“It was a year and a half without eating with my family, until things calmed down. It really was a master’s degree in life. At that time it couldn’t be done better. We didn’t have the means. Nobody had the means. And nobody thought it could be so serious and in the end it was an absolute disaster “, reflects.
Visit of Inés Rey
This week they received a visit from the mayor of A Coruña, Inés Rey, in the first institutional contact with the new person in charge of rescue in the city.
There, the councilor met with the sea captain, Gonzalo Guillén Espejo-Saavedra, who showed him the offices and explained the operation of the captaincy and the maritime administration as a whole.
They then visited the Maritime Control Tower and greeted the personnel responsible for the Coordination and Rescue Center.
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