Hampshire LRF conducts challenging multi-site severe weather exercise
In late 2008 the Hampshire Local Resilience Forum (LRF), the organisation of emergency responders for the county, staged a major two-day, severe weather training exercise, with flooding as the trigger for a number of simulated emergency events. In addition to creating a complex event with multiple information feeds, the exercise was also closely monitored by specialist observers, with valuable lessons learned.
Hampshire LRF’s major flooding exercise was designed to provide major challenges to all participants, which included, in addition to blue light services, a large army unit and a substantial local authority group. Over two days these groups, based in one large centre, were challenged with a diverse range of coastal and inland flooding problems, requiring evacuations, emergency bridging, the protection of important computer data facilities and threats to hospitals. Responses to all these threats needed to be formulated, resourced, actioned, coordinated and monitored.
To add to incident realism, local journalism students were brought in to represent news media demanding constant updates on the situations developing at multiple locations. In addition to media injects provided by VectorCommand as part of its scenario development and support for the exercise, Hampshire Constabulary’s own media production unit also filmed participants in live news conferences, which were then edited and broadcast to all participants.
Observers were positioned at all individual agency sections throughout the exercise, and the regular Strategic Coordination Group meetings. A detailed series of debriefings followed the exercise and the findings were then collated into a post-exercise report. Many important lessons have been learned as a result of the exercise. While the Strategic Coordination Group was judged to have performed well, the group responsible for gathering information, assessing its importance and providing prioritised reports to senior managers, was judged to have been a weak link in the emergency management process, and measures will be taken in the future to improve training and live operational experience in this area.
