Nuclear attack exercise to be carried out (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Nuclear attack exercise to be carried out

9:00am Saturday 16th June 2012 in News By Ian Craig

GLOUCESTERSHIRE’S readiness for a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) incident will be tested with an exercise next week.

Exercise Meteor, which has been arranged by the Local Resilience Forum (LRF) and will be held next Monday, will involve around 200 participants from the emergency services, health authority, local authorities and other organisations.

The exercise will be held at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and the ‘old Bentham works’ at Bentham.

Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service group commander Kevin Pottinger, who is involved in organising the exercise, said this was set to be the largest exercise of its kind ever conducted in the county.

“Students from the Gloucestershire College Uniformed Public services course are also assisting by providing role-players and ‘casualties’,” he said.

“The scenario has been devised to test our response to a CBRN incident, which are thankfully rare but can be complicated to deal with.

“While we have no reason to suspect such an incident will take place here, it’s important we are fully prepared for every eventuality and exercises like this are the only realistic way we can train for and test how we handle them.

“The safety and security of the public is always at the forefront of our minds, and this exercise will better prepare us to maintain that safety and security during this type of scenario.”

For more information on the LRF, visit gloucestershireprepared.co.uk or follow @Glos_Prepared on Twitter.