On 24 March, 2015 at 10 :41 am, a Germanwings Airbus crashed into the Vernet mountain in the Trois Evêchés range, in the southern French Alps. There were 144 passengers and 6 crew on board. Nobody survived.
Gendarmes from the mountain rescue unit based in Digne les Bains were informed and immediately dispatched a helicopter to the area. There, they saw the wreck of the plane.
In the next few hours, the Provence Alpes Côted'Azur (PACA) Gendarmerie units had to organise and take strategic decisions in order to deal with this exceptional crisis. It also required tasking, steering and disaster management skills. As the lead organisation, the Gendarmerie had four missions to accomplish: investigating the causes of the accident; identifying victims; preventing access to the crash site; and securing the area for the visits of victims' families.
Given the exceptional nature of the catastrophe and the level of emotional and physical trauma experienced by operatives in the field, the Gendarmerie high command quickly realised that a certain number of measures had to be taken to minimise the risks of amplifying the crisis due to emotional factors.