One theme which emerges consistently from reading Civil Protection is the benefit which the Emergency Services get from exercises.
Real live exercises held in the field are the best. These exercise just about every level of activity: overall strategic planning and problem-solving by the top brass, tactical planning and problem-solving by the middle-management in the field, physical practice of jobs by everyone. When several Services are involved, it is useful to learn to work with colleagues in other Services. The benefit of this liaison is another frequently heard comment after live incidents. Field exercises can be expensive, however, so they are held relatively infrequently.
An alternative is the table-top exercise. This still involves the players coping with a fake emergency, but instead of being held in the field it is simulated indoors. The simulation typically involves a map and sheets of paper being handed out to tell players what has just happened to them. (A note saying "your last battery pack has just died" will normally generate some satisfyingly bad language .) Table-top exercises are a useful second best: they can be held more often.
Earlier this year I organised a table-top exercise for the Group. We held it round at Graham's and made another attempt to eat all his Chorley Cakes. Exercise Waterworks involved the River Wharfe flooding. The Group was called out by the Environment Agency to provide communications between several points along the Wharfe and the Agency's headquarters in central Leeds. The exercise itself could have been designed better - my problems weren't hard enough, the Group was too good at solving them. But I think it was useful. I got the impression that people started looking for problems more than they had done before.
As with physical exercise, once is not enough. If the exercise is any good we will learn something every time. The most important things to learn, perhaps, are where we are not good enough. Now it looks as though Dick, M0APY, is going to organise another. On one of the recent call-ins he said something about "I think I've got some ideas". I know his tone of voice well enough to suspect there was an evil glint in his eye as he said it; maybe he is going to get his own back on me for failing his last battery pack on Exercise Waterworks.
Chris Trayner G4OKW
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