The UK Police National CBRN centre at Ryton deployed a range of Argon simulators to support a major chemical terrorism exercise staged at the ICC Convention centre in Birmingham on 15th August.
Funded by the European Union as part of a project to provide a means of analysing how members of the public react in times of emergency, the exercise also provided an important opportunity to exercise and evaluate the coordinated response of the emergency services to a CBRN related incident.
Argon simulators were provided to the Multi Agency Incident Assessment Teams (MAIAT), with simulation sources deployed at strategic locations within the auditorium and on “contaminated” individuals by the Ryton staff. Chemical warfare detector simulators used by the MAIAT team then responded accordingly, permitting on Scene Commanders to receive important information to inform their decisions.
This extensive multi agency chemical terrorism exercise incorporated command post set up, initial search and rescue and decontamination of casualties and included numerous participants acting as “victims”, many of whom had little briefing on what to expect in order to enhance the realism of their reactions. This enabled the Multi Agency Response to hone their skills and identify any areas that may help further improve the efficiency of their response to such an incident.
“The Argon Simulation Kit proved to be invaluable at this exercise, as the equipment provided a realistic response to a simulated area of contamination. An added advantage to this equipment relates to its ability to log user errors from the moment it is switched on, thus enhancing the debrief process.”
Training Sgt
Police National CBRN Centre
