Event Reports
Exercise Equinox Friday 26-Saturday 27 September 2008
Under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, the legislation that governs emergency planning, the LRF (Local Resilience Forum) is required to ensure that staff are trained to respond according to the various LRF plans. One way to do this is through exercises.
Exercise Equinox was held over two days, in the notional villages of Chilmark Without near Dinton within Salisbury District of Wiltshire. The exercise was to allow all the responding agencies, which include all the emergency services, health services, local authorities, military, environment agency, rail companies, the voluntary agencies and media amongst others, to practice their emergency responses in a safe and fairly realistic learning environment. Time frame was to have been from about 11:00 (with play starting at 12:30) until 18:30 (because of the bat colony) with a shift change at 15:00. Over night activities were notional. Play begins on Saturday at 08:00 until End Ex at 14:00
In reality the timing went very differently in terms of the start of play.
The exercise included elements of as evacuation, a rest centre, media centre, emergency mortuary, casualty bureau, victim identification etc and involved approximately 500 responders on the first day alone.
Wiltshire RAYNET Groups want to practice not only the strategic deployment of equipment, but to test out the robustness of message handling and live changeover briefing. We also want to take the opportunity of working with other Groups since in reality we would not have the resources to maintain manning levels over an extended period of time. In practice we didn't satisfactorily complete the shift changes due to the contracted time scale. Except with the handover on Saturday morning.
Members from Wiltshire, Hampshire, Gloucestershire and Bristol were involved about 30 operators in total.
The incident involved an military aircraft coming down on the village and a railway train. We never got to find out exactly what happened.
There was a considerable delay between a major accident being declared and the local authority (Wiltshire County Council) being informed. As a result we were not requested to provide assistance un till quite late in the proceedings. This therefore had a knock on effect of us having a substantial quantity of operators with nothing to do either on site or off it in the holding area.
We were initially contacted at 13:15 to provide communications at Wilts CC Incident Room in Trowbridge. It is believed that someone didn't inform the Chief Executive.
We were then requested to setup communications at Silver Control and then subsequently at Bronze at the Train Station and the Village, but not until half an hour later. Then due to significant traffic congestion it took the best part of one hour to get from the holding area (about 3 miles) to the site and to get setup. So play for us didn't really start till about 14:30; round about the time we had intended a shift change. It took our initiative to suggest that communications would be needed at the Rest Centre. This was fortunate as a now lost Social Services Officer reported that mobile phones didn't work at the Rest Centre.
Reliable communications were now in place between the incident sites, all operators on the ground, County Hall Trowbridge and Salisbury District Council Offices via in band and cross band talkthrough units at strategic locations. This in effect meant that anyone with a hand held could communicate directly with any other station on the net.
What did we actually do in terms of message handling? Not very much. However, we did have a few real messages as a result of a Fire Engine and an Ambulance having some sort of altercation and blocking the narrow road so that the coach, which was supposed to be transporting students "casualties" to Salisbury rail station, couldn't get through. So we mobilised the Wessex 4x4 Recovery Group to transport them to the station in a fleet of 4 wheel drive vehicles - they had had nothing to do all day except transport some water and play football amongst 20 or so vehicles.
Saturday was a different picture all together. When we arrived on site to set up Silver we were greeted with confusion over whether there had been another plane crash during the night. This turned out to be a false alarm. However, we were now asked who was at Gold (Police HQ in Devizes) - answer no one as we had not been asked to man Gold on either day. Concern was now being expressed that mobile phone and other forms of communication technology was proving unreliable(in practice Gold had been completely out of the loop on Friday as they had nothing to do all day). I had several conversations with Local Authority Officers after the event from the Devizes area (mostly because they worship in my church), they sounded pretty disappointed that they has nothing to do at all on Friday and only marginally more on Saturday. Churches together had nothing to do on either day apart from 2 of them at the Rest Centre.
So we were asked at 08:15 to provide communications to Gold at Devizes (initially we said no as we had by now sent everyone home as there was nothing to do) and to move the operators from Churchfields (Salisbury DC) to Bronze Village. However, we were able to re task an operator from Devizes who had been stood down to set up a local short range talkthrough unit and go to Police HQ. This was done by 09:00. It then became clear that single manning County Hall was also not an option. It had been intended that it would be double manned but sickness reduced the manning. So an operator from the Salisbury area was dispatched as being the closest to County Hall. They also realised that there were no communication to the Media Centre either. That position was also filled again all by 09:00
Again reliable communications were now established as before from all stations on the net.
EndEx was declared at 13:30 which came from Silver (while Gold were still in a meeting)
We have subsequently discovered that pretty much all the services were having communication difficulties to off site locations as mobile phone signals were "iffy". There was a local Tetra base station brought in specially for the event along with a satellite link.
So if you feel that we were underutilised spare at thought fro those who were sent home having done nothing and others who were there all day with nothing to do at all. At least we proved what we set out to do which was to provide reliable communications across the whole county. It was a shame that we were not used as much as we could have been.
For those of you who didn't get to see the site there will be some photos coming on to the website in the next few days and a bit more detail to the report.
Chainlink II Saturday 26th January 2008
Operating from the David John Murray Building, Swindon, Wiltshire.
Official Report can be downloaded here as a pdf file
This the David John Murray Building associated with the Brunel Centre in Swindon. 75 metes above ground level. We were on the 4th Floor.
The antenna is a WX2 dual band 2/70 on the roof with 48m of Eco flex 15 coaxial cable down to the rig (Yaesu 8800).
So far so good - but look where it actually is!
Yep, round the corner behind 2 19" Cabinets. One houses CCTV servers and the other PMR radios. And it gets better!
Now you can see the rig in situ.
Shows the top of the PMR cabinet.
As you can see we now have a magmount in the centre and a dipole on the right actually clamped to my feeder!
Never the less, despite all the hash and other QRM it worked and the results were good!!
Z6 participantsCounty |
Callsign |
Operator |
Location |
Report |
Berks |
G8CIX |
Martin |
Walbury Hill |
GR |
East Sussex |
G0BUX |
Bob |
|
GR |
Isle of Wight |
G0VPO |
Alan |
Sandown |
UR |
Kent |
M0KCR |
Richard |
Farthing Common |
GR |
Oxon |
G4YUA |
Martin |
SU343850 |
GR |
South Sussex |
G1SSR |
Steve |
Devils Dyke |
UR |
Hants |
G1SEH |
Paul |
Fort Widley |
UR |
Surrey |
M1SRC/P |
Nigel |
Hogs Back |
GR |
County |
Callsign |
Operator |
Location |
Report |
Essex |
2E0LOM |
Paul |
Harlow |
GR |
Herts |
G4KUJ |
Trevor |
Watford |
GR |
Herts |
G4PMG |
Martin |
Wiggington |
GR |
|
Callsign |
Operator |
Location |
Report |
London |
G3NAT |
Phil |
Guys Tower |
GR |
County |
Callsign |
Operator |
Location |
Report |
Bath & NE Somerset |
M0BPJ |
Phil |
Lansdown F&R HQ |
GR |
Wilts |
G4NWR |
Noel |
David John Murray Tower Swindon |
N/A |
Key
GR Good Readable
UR Unreadable - no contact
N/A Not applicable - I could quite easily talk to myself.