3 Fire Appliances from Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service plus 1 From Hereford and Worcester took part in a training exercise at the pioneer Centre Cleobury Mortimer on 15 September 2008.
The crews from Cleobury Mortimer, Bewdley, Tweedale and Ludlow were faced with the challenging scenario of a large building, which had been filled with cosmetic smoke, their task was to search the building using breathing apparatus to locate and rescue an unknown number of missing persons.
To further complicate the task the officer in charge of the first appliance on scene was met my a member of staff from the pioneer centre who spoke to him only in Portuguese, this gave an opportunity to test the new 'Language Line' translation service recently introduced into Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service.
Search and rescue operations.
The incident was escalated to the higher Level 2 Command and command support was given by Amber Watch Tweedale.
Senior officers and staff from other departments including Fire Control, Training and Retained Support Officers' acted as observers.
The exercise was declared a success by its director ADO Jim Quinn who commented "this was an excellent example of neighbouring Fire and Rescue Service's working together as one. These type of training events are necessary to ensure the general public receive the highest quality of service" and praised the efforts of all those involved.
Exercise Pioneer team photo.
Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service would like to thank The Pioneer Centre for allowing the exercise to take place on their premises and for the assistance given by Tim Stone and all his staff. Particular thanks are due to staff members Paul Goddard and Luiz Felipe Marques for taking part in the exercise as duty managers on site.
