South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue is helping to reduce road deaths in Moldova by donating equipment used to cut people free from road crashes.

The service has given its old Zumro cutting gear to a UK fire service humanitarian charity working to in the country improve survival rates from road traffic collisions.

In 2012 there were 2,712 recorded road traffic collisions in the Republic of Moldova, causing 441 deaths. This makes the country’s fatality rate for RTCs more than 10 times that of the UK’s.

Factors contributing to this are the length of time for rescue assistance to reach incidents, a lack of necessary equipment to respond effectively to incidents, and gaps in knowledge of those responding to incidents.

Operation Florian is a project created with an aim to combat this and help bring down the number of fatalities. Fire services across the UK regularly donate equipment and provide training to help achieve this.

Assistant Chief Fire Officer Martin Blunden, said: “This is a great cause that I feel really passionate about. The road death casualty rates in Moldova are unacceptably high and I think we have a duty in the developed world to share learning with firefighters there to help save lives. People should be safe in the knowledge that emergency services are there to support them in a time of need, regardless of where in the world they live. It makes perfect sense to donate equipment like this to help support that aim.”