09 October 2024
On Tuesday 8 October, the emergency services and other responders took part in a live
major incident exercise to test procedures at the harbour, and how agencies work together in a
crisis.
It gave those involved the opportunity to practise in a safe and secure environment, to learn
lessons and continually improve the way they work together to save lives and reduce harm in
response to incidents.
The exercise involved testing the emergency response when establishing a Survivor Reception
Centre.
Exercise Director and Deputy Emergency Planning Officer, Richard Blake said: “The Government of
Jersey Emergency Planning Team and the Jersey Resilience Forum take training, exercising and
learning very seriously.
“The approach is risk based, where we analyse risks that are serious enough to meet the definition
of a major incident or emergency, and then focus our planning, and training and exercising on
those that are considered to be the most serious.
“Yesterday we brought together the emergency services, Jersey Customs and Immigration Service,
Government departments and others to focus on our capabilities in response to an incident at the
harbour. The benefit of such an exercise allows us to check test our plans but also to make sure
that our generic major incident response arrangements can adapt to any crisis response.
“I’d like to thank all our emergency services, and resilience partners in the Jersey Resilience Forum
for their ongoing support and dedication. Their degree of commitment, dedication and
professionalism to emergency preparedness should be extremely reassuring for the public.
“We would also like to thank those that we drafted in to perform as actors. Without their
assistance we would not have been able to successfully operate this exercise.”
Among the actors were a contingent from Highlands College’s Uniformed Services course. This
experience will form part of their education this term, and provided insight into some of the roles
they may consider as a career in later life.
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