Emergency Services sea disaster exercise cost £10k

Saturday 22 April 2017

A large-scale maritime disaster exercise involving 100 actors and emergency units from Jersey, France and the UK cost around £10,000, it has emerged.

Operation ‘Resilient Islands’ saw the Duke of Normandy tug and later the Condor Rapide pose as a “distressed ship” for training purposes, in an exercise which saw the Coastguard, Police, Fire and Ambulance Services respond to a fictitious ferry called ‘Jaguar’, which crashes into a 4,000-passenger cruise ship.

Jaguar was then towed into the Harbour, where a ‘fire’ – created by a smoke machine effect – blazed through the deck, and was attended by the Fire Services, who had to fight their way through the vessel. 

Taking place over five days in early March, Resilient Islands was said to be the largest emergency exercise ever undertaken in the Channel Islands.

But now the costs of that exercise have been revealed in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, showing that it totalled £10,475.10 for the States of Jersey Emergency Services.

Excellent response and coordination at Exercise #resilientislands over the last two days. More to test tomorrow pic.twitter.com/s1uSizCiAX

— Sergeant Mark Ruston (@DC_OpsSergeant) March 8, 2017

Staff costs were the largest expenditure at £6,826.42, which came out of each agency’s training budget.

Equipment totalled £1,891.72, while refreshments for the volunteers and emergency responders was around £1,067.66.

Experts were invited to the Island to observe the exercise at a cost of £616.50 to cover their travel and accommodation.

Additional administration and ‘other’ expenditure came to £72.80.

More firefighter's being deployed #resilientislands pic.twitter.com/Rat9dnWN4N

— Jersey Fire & Rescue (@JsyFire) March 8, 2017

Nonetheless, the total cost is likely to be more, as expenditure on the exercise by Ports of Jersey – the authority that largely coordinated the exercise – was not included in the FOI.

Express has tried to contact them for comment.

At the time, Harbour Master, Captain Phil Buckley, described Resilient Islands as, “…a great opportunity to test a wide range of responses in a maritime setting”, adding that it promised a chance to, “…learn a great deal about the challenges involved in the unlikely event that we are confronted by a significant marine catastrophe”.