Last evening we had a District exercise at the Bernard Matthews factory at Holton, near Halesworth.
We were the only pump from Lowestoft and left at 1830 hours to allow us plenty of time for the drive down to Halesworth. The PRT (Normanshurst 05) went on standby to Halesworth Fire Station as the exercise was tying up a lot of local resources – Halesworth, Wrentham, Beccles, Bungay, Southwold and ourselves.
I think the main point of the exercise was to give the officers a chance at managing a major incident with multi-pumps, plenty of BA wearers going through 3 different entry points.
For my part I ran out a couple of lengths of 70mm hose and had a short BA wear with Greg.
The BA wear did highlight some ‘learning points’, as the Fire Service likes to refer to cock-ups! There was a problem with communication between BA teams and their respective BA Entry Control points. Much of it is down to there not being any unified way of referencing the different BA teams. We were Team 3 working through Entry Control point 2. But calling us up gets confused with another Team 3. Also there were problems for us contacting our BAECO (BA Entry Control Officer). Because we couldn’t get a reply from our BAECO, we exited the building. In a real incident this is what we would do because, for all we know, BAECO may have been trying to contact us with vital information or to pass on an evacuation message.
The most obvious way of numbering BA teams would be 1 to 5 through the first entry control point, then 5 to 10 through the next. That way you never repeat a team number. There was talk that we should be referred to as Normanshurst Team 1, Wrentham Team 1 etc. But you still have more than one Team 1. It isn’t always easy to distinguish your station name. Perhaps I’ll put a suggestion in!
Everything was made up by 2030 hours and all the OIC’s and officers had a debrief which lasted over 20 minutes. By this time I’d manoeuvred our pump into pole position for a quick getaway and the half hour drive back to Lowestoft.
And no, I didn’t see one snuffling turkey…
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