Evacuation Training Exercise on ‘Tresham Airlines’

A training exercise involving the emergency evacuation of a large passenger plane based at Tresham College of Further and Higher Education’s Kettering campus has been featured in Crimewatch Roadshow on BBC 1 http://bit.ly/FireEvacTraining.

The scenario, which was filmed last month at Tresham, involved the simulated evacuation of a smoke-filled plane fuselage based at the campus by the emergency services.

Following a successful event held at the college last summer the college was approached by Mick Berry from Kettering Fire Station to host a similar event involving Northamptonshire Fire & Rescue Service (NFRS), Northamptonshire Police, East Midlands Ambulance Service and St John’s Ambulance.

More than 60 Tresham students and staff from Travel and Tourism and Uniformed Public Services got involved in the simulated plane evacuation exercise which saw the reconstruction of a flight needing to carry out an emergency landing and rescues being made from a smoke filled cabin.

The multi-agency training involved local Fire and Rescue Services as well as St. Johns Ambulance, Northamptonshire Police, Emergency Services Cadets and East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) paramedics. This type of multi-agency training allows rescue teams to improve effectiveness, efficiency and teamwork between the services to respond quickly to incidents.

The exercise provided a realistic scenario of a passenger aircraft forced to make an emergency landing. The students from Travel and Tourism and Uniformed Public Services acted as casualties as part of the exercise, they were all given different role play cards to act out once the training started.

NFRS dealt with a fire associated with an aircraft which resulted in an emergency landing of the large passenger aircraft and the rescue of passengers from the cabin using firefighters in breathing apparatus and thermal imaging search tools to escort large numbers of people in a distressed situation. St. John’s Ambulance supported EMAS and the emergency services to provide care and medical treatment. Northamptonshire Police and the Northamptonshire Emergency Services Cadets managed the co-ordination of all emergency services and secured, protected and preserved the scene. 

Travel and Tourism students also had the opportunity to demonstrate a controlled emergency evacuation of an aircraft which is excellent experience for them to use as part of their CV and applications for future work on airlines or in the industry.

Mick Berry, Kettering Fire Station Manager said:
“The day at Tresham proved a very successful event, giving each of the crew members  involved some valuable practical experience in working together to deal with this type of disaster. We look to identify different risks within our area and opportunities to carry out realistic training exercises involving other emergency services. This allows us not only to test our own procedures but also the joint interoperability procedures too.

“We would like to say thank you to Tresham College for hosting the day and to express our appreciation to the other emergency service members who worked closely with us to make the event such a worthwhile experience.”

Dan Burns, Head of School for Sport, Leisure and Services Industries commented:

“This re-enactment of an emergency response scenario was a great example of how Tresham works alongside local partners to enhance the learner experience and prepare them for the world of work in their chosen career.

This was a fantastic event and students commented on how great it was to be involved as part of their studies at Tresham. They really appreciated being embedded within such a real life incident that links directly to their future careers. This is one of many events that we run in partnership with the emergency services as part of an ongoing and successful working relationship.”

The event was filmed by the BBC Crimewatch Roadshow to show the value of a scenario based training within a proactive film to show how emergency forces – and indeed trainees in specific fields such as flight attendants – train for a major incident which would involve all the different services.  It was broadcast on Monday 27^th June at 09.15hrs on BBC1 and can be viewed until 28th June via http://bit.ly/FireEvacTraining