More than 100 people from the emergency services, including fire officers from the Isle of Wight, have taken part in a large scale multi-agency exercise that involved a simulated terrorist attack.
Exercise Titanium was held on Sunday at Prince Phillips Barracks, in Bordon, which is one of Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service’s unique training sites.
The scenario was based around a group of terrorists storming a block of flats and attacking the occupants with knives then setting the building on fire. The terrorists subsequently moved onto a nearby restaurant where they attacked approximately 50 people.
The annual fire service exercise tested all aspects of the response and teams from South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) and Hampshire Constabulary also took part.
Dean Haward, Group Manager for the Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service was one of the leading officers taking part in the exercise.
Station Manager Jim Clarke, who spent more than 3 months putting together the exercise, said:
“The exercise went very well and has been extremely challenging for all of those involved, as it was designed to be.
“I have been impressed with the hard work and commitment shown by everyone taking part.
Article continues below this advertisement “The chance to practice large scale incidents like this is invaluable to the emergency services and ultimately means we will all be better prepared if we ever have to do it for real.
“Exercises like this are good opportunities to see if there are ways in which we can improve on the excellent service we already provide and to improve working with our partners.
“To make the exercise as realistic, immersive and useful as possible we were able to use ‘real fire’ which is the benefit of Prince Philip Barracks as a training site and we also involved the Casualty Union who provided ‘live casualties’ with very realistic injuries”.
