In December, Public Service Foundation Degree (Year 2) students taking the module 'Resilience and Emergency Management' took part in an assessed, table-top simulation of a major incident.

The scenario was devised by Shamsu Choudhury, Emergency Planning Advisor from Cambridgeshire County Council and Bob Bacon and Andrew Browning, Resilience Officers at Cambridgeshire Constabulary, and was the culmination of hard work and preparation with representatives of the principle services involved.

Also in attendance at the event were Bruce Parcell (Station Manager and Service Resilience Coordinator at Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service) and Vladek Cirin (Health Emergency Planning Officer for NHS Cambridgeshire and NHS Peterborough PCT Cluster).

The scenario involved a major fire at Cambridge venue 'The Junction', and involved a large number of casualties. Working with the service professionals, students carried out a variety tasks as the scenario developed, including:

• identifying the point at which to declare a 'major incident'
• how to involve other necessary organisations
• distribution of casualties to local hospitals
• setting up cordons
• consulting important documentation such as local risk registers and maps
• setting up rest centres
• coordinating the recovery phase

It was also necessary to create multi-agency teams to coordinate other tasks such as strategic level communications with the media and public.

One of the service professionals commented: "All of the young people made useful contributions to the 'response' and I believe learned quite a lot about the complexities of undertaking a good response to a Major Incident."

In preparation for the exercise, all the Public Service staff involved gave lectures on their roles and services, as did Gren Morgan (Resilience Manager for the East of England Ambulance Service Trust).


Julian Constable
Senior Lecturer, FdA and BA (Hons) Public Service

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