The Falcon 16 aircraft of the Italian Air Force landed in Florence shortly after 00:50 today, transporting a thirteen-year-old girl in imminent danger of life from Catania.
The request for transport, as happens in these cases, was received by the Prefecture of Messina at the Situation Room at the Summit of the Command of the Air Squad, the operations room of the Air Force which has among its tasks that of organizing and managing this kind of transport throughout the national territory in coordination with the Prefectures.
The thirteen year old, in very serious conditions, needed to be transferred from the University Hospital “G. Martino ”in Messina at the“ Meyer ”pediatric hospital in Florence. The Summit Situation Room has thus activated one of the assets of the Armed Force in readiness 24 hours a day also for this kind of need. The 24 ° Stormo aircraft, which took off from Ciampino military airport, made a stopover in Catania Fontanarossa to embark the young patient and the medical team, who in turn arrived on the spot in an ambulance, and then left for Florence. where an ambulance was waiting for the patient for the scheduled transport to the Tuscan pediatric hospital.
The interventions of aircraft and crews of the Italian Air Force in various activities in favor of the community, from emergency medical transport, as happened yesterday, in the day of August, for the transfer of a four-year-old Pakistani child in danger of life are daily from Alghero to Rome, or for air search and rescue activities, like the one conducted in the early hours of today's dawn in Sardinia, where a helicopter of the Ximuma Center Combat SAR (Search And Rescue) of Decimomannu intervened to bring except for five Roman boys among the 80 and 20 years stuck on a rock near Porto Cervo. These are missions that require maximum timeliness and the Air Force, through its flight departments located throughout the territory, provides airplanes and crews ready to take off in very short times and able to operate even in adverse weather conditions to ensure urgent transport not only of people in imminent danger of life, but also of organs and medical teams for transplants. Every year thousands of flight hours are carried out in this context by the 24 ° Stormo of Ciampino, 31 ° Stormo di Pratica di Mare, the 14 ° Stormo of Cervia and the 15a Air Brigade of Pisa, always on the front line in cases of major emergencies and national disasters.