The 12th Brigade Guadarrama carries out preventive disinfection tasks in several nursing homes in the north of Madrid.
centres, nursing homes and care centres
for vulnerable people, airports, ports,
train, metro and bus stations, as well as
state, regional and municipal authority
facilities.
The main effort is focused on hospitals
and nursing homes, where the frontline
battle against the pandemic is fought.
“Every day we travel between 700 and
800 kilometres throughout Aragón and
Navarre”, says UME Captain Enrique
Bascuas, who commands a company of
the 4th Emergency Intervention Battalion
(BIEM IV), which is based in Zaragoza and
also operates in Catalonia, the Basque
Country and La Rioja.
In the rest of the country, these
tasks are carried out by the four other
BIEMs of the UME, as well as by its
Intervention Group in Technological and
Environmental Emergencies (GIETMA).
These specialists advise and train the
•Disinfection of traffic control centres.
>WEDNESDAY 18TH
•The King addresses the country: “We are a society that
stands strong in the face of all adversity”.
•Extraordinary plenary session of Parliament; all groups
express, with slight nuances, their support for the
Government.
•A Guardia Civil dies from coronavirus, the first casualty among
the State Security Forces.
>THURSDAY 19TH
•Operation Balmis now extends to the 17 autonomous
communities, Ceuta and Melilla.
•Military units patrol numerous cities warning citizens of the
ban on movement.
UME and other military units, and reserve
the right to act in places where the number
of infections is very high, such as in the
aforementioned nursing homes, or in the
task of transferring patients.
They clean and disinfect waiting rooms
and other spaces in hospitals, especially
where a person has died from coronavirus,
“because the room must be occupied
immediately by another patient”, says
Captain Bascuas.
•Disinfection in airports, ports, stations, public buildings,
hospitals and nursing homes.
>FRIDAY 20TH
•The military support the Guardia Civil in the surveillance of the
Trillo, Almaraz and Cofrentes nuclear power plants.
•The IFEMA emergency shelter for the homeless set up by the
Army opens.
>SATURDAY 21ST
•The UME transfers patients between hospitals to redistribute
them according to capacity.
•Military Healthcare intensifies assistance to the elderly in
nursing homes.
•The Engineering Command and the Health Brigade advise on
the assembly of the provisional hospital at IFEMA. >
April 2020 Revista Española de Defensa 17
Pepe Díaz