Planning for an emergency

Tuesday 05 August 2014

Plans are in place to instigate a new training and exercise programme for all emergency services to provide a coherent and commonly understood way of working, according to the new emergency planning officer Joe Carnegie.

Mr Carnegie, who was appointed in April, is charged with providing advice and guidance to the Emergency Planning Board and Emergencies Council as well as ensuring effective co-ordination of the Island’s resources for responding to any emergency.

A former Army major and security specialist, he says the experience gained by the local emergency services in recent years mean such events are now quite normal for them, but the implementation of a new and enhanced training and exercising strategy for all levels of command will ensure continuous improvements in how the Police, Fire and Ambulance services operate together.

Jersey has recently adopted the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme (JESIP), used by over a hundred organisations across the UK, the aim of which is to provide a consistent joint emergency services response to all serious incidents so that each of the services knows what the others are doing and how to work together.

As well as establishing joint interoperability principles and ways of working, ensuring major incident plans can be instigated quickly and effectively, JESIP also provides a framework for ongoing training and assessment and encourages information sharing between the emergency services and other responders.

Currently, the emergency services undertake one major training exercise a year to respond to a range of different possible scenarios identified as a high level “red risk” to the Island. These are possible incidents which could severely impact the economy and/or environment, such as a major fault at the Flamanville nuclear power plant on the Cotentin peninsula or a transport disaster.

In June, all three services took part in an exercise at the Prison, dealing with a suspected fire, but Mr Carnegie explained that, in addition to this annual training exercise, there will also be three or four smaller exercises undertaken each year.

“These will cause some disruption to the public, for which we apologise in advance, but the best way to get procedures in place is to practice in a benign environment,” he said.