Hundreds of emergency responders test reaction to major building collapse in Hertfordshire
The training took place at The Snow Centre in Hemel Hempstead
Emergency services across Hertfordshire have been putting their skills to the test in one of the county's biggest-ever training exercises.
'Exercise Frostbite' brings together firefighters, police, paramedics, Red Cross, air ambulance, and other partners to simulate how they would react to a building collapse and complex rescue operation.
The training took place at The Snow Centre in Hemel Hempstead, which included a mass casualty scenario.
Hertfordshire’s Chief Fire Officer, Alex Woodman said: “Working in partnership is absolutely crucial.
“There is no one agency that can deal to major incidents such as this. So being able to bring teams together, work real life scenarios is really important to us to simulate what we may need to do for our community.”
He added: “We want to make sure that the public are assured we are there, when they need us.
“We don't want to be in this situation, but we need to make sure that we can operate, and we can respond in these complex and difficult scenarios.”
Inspector Andrew Mellor from Hertfordshire Police said: "For our response officers, we recognise that they may be the first on scene to deal with a major incident or any other kind of significant emergency.
“It's just fundamentally important that we give them the opportunity to rehearse their skills, rehearse their ability to mitigate and recognise risk, and essentially work together with other emergency services.”
Dave King, Resilience Manager for East of England Ambulance Service in Hertfordshire says this is one of the largest-scale exercises that he has worked on.
He said: “There's so many moving parts to it, to get everything working together with the people that volunteer their time.
“So, this is a really large scale exercise.”