We do not normally report on our regular Wednesday night training exercises, but tonight was very slightly different. Our ever imaginative Training Officer set up an exercise, whereby we had to evacuate a large number of ” casualties ” from a ( disused ) railway line, as would be required if we were called in to a major incident, to assist the other Emergency services, at say a rail disaster. ( where our role, amongst other tasks, would be to assist in casualty evacuation to the Ambulance loading point )
26 Team members took part, and managed within the space of one hour to evacuate 43 exercise casualties, in a relay of stretchers and ” walking wounded “

Some of the cast of thousands in tonights exercise.

An excellent Triage Sieve, was in operation by two of our team members who work in A&E Departments, whilst a team member who is a Policeman, went back to old fashioned Police duties, by escorting the ten willing exercise volunteers, back to the casualty site, across a busy main road, in small groups to mimic a larger number of casualties. ( 50 in total, every time they returned to the site for another go, they had a different “injury card ” on their person )
All in an excellent exercise, that kept everybody working very hard. ( Chris Tennant ended up with writers cramp maintaining our radio log, whist Mark Scott, our Treasurer apllied his counting skills to checking in all the exercise casualties ! )