Our Hazardous Areas Response Team (HART) recently took part in Exercise Civic Flame in Ellesmere Port, a multi-agency training event organised by Cheshire Fire and Rescue (FRS) testing ten second triage in a simulated building fire and explosion.

In addition to HART and Cheshire FRS, there was also involvement from colleagues in our emergency operations centre, as well as Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, Cheshire Council, and United Utilities.

An old council building was used to stage a simulated explosion with the different agencies using live actors to carry out treatments and assess casualties. A new ten second triage was also tested and helped highlight the value of JESIP principles and joint working. JESIP principles, also known as Joint Emergency Service Interoperability Programme principles, are particularly important in the early stages of an incident, when clear, robust decisions and actions need to be taken with minimum delay, often in a rapidly changing environment.

Feedback on the back of the event was positive following the amount of learning that took place, in addition to the exercise showing that the different services are able to work well together in large scale incidents. It was also noted that more joint exercises would be beneficial for the different services to fully understand each other’s capabilities.

Reflecting on the event, HART Team Leader David Berry, said: “These exercises are important so we can ensure that all agencies can put into practice JESIP principles.

“It’s important we know what each agency can bring to a large scale, multi-casualty or major incident, and continue to make improvements from lessons learnt to help enhance our ability to respond appropriately.”