Emergency Evacuation Exercise – Feb 2013

St John Rescue Corps (SJRC) participated with the Civil Protection Department (CPD) and other volunteer organisations in a fire and rescue exercise held at The Radisson Blu Golden Sands on 23rd February. This exercise consisted of a simulation of fire breaking out on the sixth floor of the hotel and a number of guests were reported ‘missing’. The Corps’ volunteers were called out by the CPD and immediately deployed from their base at Fort Madalena with their Fire Truck and other rescue vehicles. Upon arrival on site, SJRC were instructed by the CPD Incident Commander to immediately deploy a team of fire fighters with Breathing Apparatus (BA) and to set up their own BA Entry Control Point just one floor below the fire. Artificially generated smoke was used to reduce visibility and casualties were hidden in a number of rooms on the sixth floor. The floor was sweep searched and a number of ‘unconscious’ casualties were found and evacuated out of the smoke filled storey and handed over to the medical team. After the exercise and make up of equipment, a debriefing was carried out in order to establish any areas for possible improvement. Soon after the team returned to Fort Madalena to conduct their scheduled Saturday afternoon training.