This month employees from across the county council had the opportunity to take part in Exercise TRITON.
The exercise tested how organisations across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent would work together to tackle a real-life major flooding incident.
Having taken part in the exercise, I know it involved a lot more time and commitment than perhaps we had expected, but it was important the exercise reflected the impact on resources.
After starting slowly at the start of the week with fairly innocuous weather reports about heavy rain, by Thursday the county council found itself at the heart of a 24-hour exercise.
This involved setting up a gold command at Staffordshire Police, where leads across partnership organisations co-ordinated the response to the “disaster.”
We were joined by the Army, Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service, Staffordshire Police, neighbouring local authorities, NHS partners, utility companies, highways and transport agencies and Government departments as we dealt with the scenario of wide spread flooding across the county.
Organising Exercise TRITON itself took a huge amount of planning and the Civil Contingencies Unit did a fantastic job in pulling it off.
The “real-life” incident put all “players” under pressure at times and made us all challenge how we would perform in an actual incident.
While there are obviously lessons to be learned from TRITON, and the CCU is co-ordinating these, I was reassured that the council and indeed the county is absolutely ready and able to tackle any major real life incident, should it occur.
This was an exercise, but we need look no further than the real life devastating flooding in Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic to see why these exercises are so important.
I would like to personally thank both all those who took part, particularly those who were had the “graveyard shift” working right through the night, and the employees who ensured it was business as usual for the council, while the exercise took place.
If you weren’t involved and would like to know more then you can follow Exercise TRITON as it unfolded at www.staffordshireprepared.gov.uk