Exercise White Water

A Successful Part 2 of Exercise White Water

The first part of Exercise White Water took place on 2nd, 3rd and 4th November 2009 at Copthorne Barracks and involved strategic ("Gold" level) and some Tactical ("Silver" level) play to test the new Staffordshire Emergency Flood Plan.

Part two today involved

• Joint working with Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) and Staffordshire Police to effect a live water rescue and afterwards a live body recovery operation (using dummies!)
• A live rest centre exercise where volunteers playing the part of people displaced from their homes due to flooding were received and looked after by Stafford Borough Council's rest centre team.
• A test of the Staffordshire Resilience Forum (SRF) temporary mortuary arrangements involving Kenyons International.
• A test of the Airwave radio multi-agency interoperability arrangements between Police and Fire
• A tabletop test of the SRF Mass transportation Plan which would have to be activated in the event of large numbers of people being evacuated from a badly flooded area.

Operational Assurance Manager Ian Housley from SFRS said 

"There has clearly been a massive amount of benefit to multi agency partners from the joint participation in this exercise today. I believe we have all learnt a lot"

Staffordshire Director of Civil Contingencies Andy Marshall said

"Following on from Exercise White Water 1 in November, we have been able to test a number of key plans and procedures and overall this will have massive benefit to the SRF partnership"