The Pieve di Cadore Emergency Operative Centre is situated about 40 Km north of

the province principal city, Belluno

The Emergency Medical Services started its experimental service in 1985 only

supported by a mobile resuscitation centre which was situated in the Auronzo

Hospital.

Later on, August, 9 1986 the whole territorial emergency service was managed by

three emergency offices which where all accessible by a single telephone number.

This number, 9340, was accessible without needing to dial the zone number.

On June, 1 1988, the National Mountain Rescue Service asked for a helicopter

service in the Dolomites region, which was authorized, as an experimental service, by

the Veneto Region, improving the three scheduled services ( Treviso, Padova,

Verona)

With this number, the emergency service was granted to the whole Belluno Region

by a new unique telephone number.

At that time, the mountain rescue service was conducted by teams composed of

volunteers who tried to reach the needing people in the fastest time in a challenging

environment, anytime, anywhere with the aim to rescue and move the injured people

to a safer zone. Due to the mountain environment, one of the hardest where to

conduct a rescue operation, sometimes all the efforts to save lives where frustrated

because of the time needed to reach the zone.

Actually, thanks to the helicopter, rescue operations are conducted in a very short

time allowing the medic and paramedic personnel and the mountain rescue team to

reach the operation zone in the fastest time, furthermore, virtually there is no zone

that couldn’t be reached by winch, hook or hovering.

When a major hospital is needed, the rescue operation continues in a hospital flight

linking the accident zone to the most important hospitals in less than 30 or 40

minutes.

On May, 18 1991 the unique emergency telephone number, 118, was adopted. First

118 service in Italy together with Bologna and Udine. Till this year the service was

ruled an a regional base and only from 1992, the law called DPR March 27, 1992

established national rules to be followed.

On March 28, 1998 an experimental night flight period started. This period lasted for

six month during which 85 requests where done and 35 missions where flown.

Some missions had to be aborted due to bad whether, night flight uncertified helipads

(40%) and scheduled helicopter technical service.

The Belluno province has an extension of 3679 with a population of about 214000

people (58 people/skm): This population increase a lot during the holidays periods.

The inhabitants are distributed in 69 district, 610 villages, with the presence of 14

winter holidays resorts (6 under Pieve di Cadore Hospital responsibility) and 527

cable installations.

There are 97 huts, 53 bivouacs, 53 mountain paths and 41 (via ferrata, guardalo su

qualche manuale alpinistico)

There are 2 local medical districts, N.1 Belluno and N.2 Feltre.

The allowable resources are:

6 Hospitals

1 Helicopter

58 ambulances

3 emergency cars

1 emergency motorbike

14 medical guard offices

74 pharmacies