On 31th of January 2020, the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service organized a blood donation for the third time, in the usual place in Budapest, in the reception building of the Szemlő-hegyi-cave.

The registration of the participants took place in the exhibition hall, where in the background the inscriptions like “I am thirsty, but NOT bloodthirsty” could been read as attunements.

This year’s summary in brief: 27 blood donors x 4.5 dl of blood taken = 12 liters of blood (equivalent to 2.5 adults).

This blood donation was announced mainly for cavers, the members of the cave rescue service and the staff of the Danube-Ipoly National Park, which also provided the venue, and we were also waiting for the voluntiers from Facebook.

This year, 27 of the 33 registered participants were able to donate blood, 3 of whom were new blood donors. 

Grimpday, one of the most prestigious rope rescue competitions in the world, is held every year in the beautiful city of Namur in Belgium. Previously, there were Hungarian participants in 2011, where Richárd Horváth and Csaba Császár, members of the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service (BMSZ), strengthened the team of the Budapest Fire Brigade.

In this year's competition, the HUNOR team was also able to participate from Hungary. Hunor is the organization of professional heavy search and rescue, capable of being deployed under special circumstances under the National Directorate General for Disaster Management of the Ministry of Interior.

4 of the members of the starting team are active members of the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service in civil life. The competition featured 30 rescue teams from 13 countries from 4 continents, thus team members were very honored to participate.

The Ultrabalaton running race was held on the 11-13 May. Our team of four rescue members participated in the event. Lajos Sass, Kilián Huber, Péter Kunisch and Péter Gonda ran in the colours of the Hungarian Cave Rescue Service. This year, the team was escorted by a driver, Zoltán Kiss, also a team member of the rescue service.

The weather was rather moody, the temperature was around 3-4C in the early morning, which was followed by a 25-degree heat.  The 220 kms’ distance race had to be finished in a storm during night. The first runner of the team started at 6:35 a.m. on Saturday and the last arrived at 2:31 a.m. on Sunday in the finish area.

The long race was exhaustive enough and it was interspersed with minor cramps and unsettled stomach.

It has become a tradition that the Duna-Ipoly National Park celebrates the Earth Day together with other non-governmental organizations and this year was no exception to this tradition. The event has attracted and called outdoors many families again. The Hungarian Cave Rescue Service was happy to join to it. As usual, we made all the preparations for the cave rescue demonstration early Saturday afternoon in the territory of the quarry, where the visitors of the Pál-völgyi barlang (Paul Valley Cave) curiously spotted the sky as they reached to the exit.

Sunday event was visited by many people and fortunately the raining waited until the end of the day. We demonstrated how we carry the stretcher together in the event of an accident and the stretcher could also be tested by the visitors at our stand.