I was rather surprised to hear on the local news this morning of a major, pan-european emergency planning exercise which is taking place over three days just outside Portsmouth, starting today. To say that publicity around Exercise Orion has been minimal is somewhat of an understatement!
I hope that the final evaluation reports will be publicised a little better than the exercise so that all can see the results of this key test of our UK response teams.
Exercise Orion is being funded by the European Union and led by the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Local Resilience Forum. 27 EU states and a further 3, possibly more, will be involved in the exercise which aims to test the UK’s response to a highly unlikely, but potentially devestating scenario.
As published on the Exercise Orion website the aims of the exercise are to:
Test activation and understanding of the EU Community Mechanism to provide mutual aid to the affected Member State (MS) from the EU;
– by testing the Community Mechanism for Civil Protection and coordination of assistance through the Monitoring and Information Centre (MIC – based in Brussels)
– by testing the deployment, command and effectiveness of the EU Module system
– by testing the deployment and operation of EU assessment and coordination teams
– by testing the coordination of incoming EU assistance
– by testing existing EU communication and information systems
For the first time to test England’s ability to receive, command and work alongside emergency response teams from other EU member states;
– by verifying operational and strategic procedures of all actors involved
– by providing an opportunity to establish an operational and common understanding of EU civil protection cooperation
– by providing learning opportunities for all civil protection actors involved
– by providing an opportunity to test a major deployment of assets
– by enhancing operational cooperation between involved parties
To give EU and other observers an interactive role during the exercise, in order to contribute to the evaluation of the project.
To achieve a broader dissemination of lessons learned through the evaluation process.
The exercise also brings together teams from Hertfordshire and Merseyside.
Scenarios to be tested within the exercise include:
1) Collapsed apartment block (visible from ground level)
2) Collapsed motorway bridge (visible from ground level)
3) Collapsed retirement home
4) Damaged oil storage facility (Underground and not visible)
There will also be 35 additional scenarios involved that will be injected into the exercise over the three days.
If you know any further details about the exercise that you think would be of value to those people involved in emergency planning and business continuity, please feel free to comment here.
Tags: exercise orion earthquake hampshire emergency planning
I hope this is all being conducted in a private facility then. When a local plan was tested at a local power station there was a “War of the Worlds” type reaction as the emergency services were inundated with calls from the public
Fort Widley and Southampton Airport are among the locations, so not that private!
I’m glad this exercise isn’t being conducted in a private facility! If a disaster should strike the UK I don’t think it will be considerate and only strike in a private facility. In order for the emergency services to be able to offer the public the best service they can to assist them should, God forbid, a rescue of this scale be needed, the emergency services need to have at least tried the various rescue scenario’s in “the real world”.
An extremely valid point Katherine to which I have to agree, the more simulated ‘chaos’ the better, because the emergency services would be inundated with calls at the same time as having to deal with the disaster.
I’m just dropping my opinion, I won’t be back to retrieve it, you can keep it.
I was at the Fort Widley site on the 7th, as a ‘casualty’
at about 0:29 on this video, behind the window in the rubble pile
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-11210738
basically, Katherine, I hear what you’re saying and I like your idea, and I agree, but to some extents it just isn’t feasible: there will always be people who don’t realise that what they see isn’t a real emergency and take up valuable phone lines which are needed for real emergencies. Also, you’ll have noticed the amount of people wearing dust masks in the video: large amounts of dust (I’m talking about a dozen wheely bins filled with the stuff) were dropped from parapets and some pyrotechnics were set off, which left large clouds of smoke and dust on the site for some time: needless to say, that can cause medical problems to people who aren’t wearing the necessary protective equipment. And, the van on fire: live fire and people who don’t know exactly what is going on don’t mix at all.
Although, I think you are also saying that the firefighters were accustomed to the environment, I can assure you they weren’t, Hampshire Fire and Rescue’s Urban Search And Rescue teams spent the best part of 6 months converting the Widley site into a disaster zone, only they knew what it was like before the exercise and they actually ran it: they didn’t take part in the exercise itself. I hope that’s helped you, and I would advise on emailing somebody from the organizations that ran the exercise, but it’s December now, and I don’t think they’ll be able to help you.