Nearly 100 'rescued' in Albrighton emergency services training exercise - with pictures
The lifesavers of Shropshire were put through their paces during an intense training exercise where nearly 100 casualties needed rescuing.
The training day in Albrighton brought together 13 ambulance crews from across the region to deal with a number of high-risk emergency scenarios.
Members of the West Midlands Ambulance Service Hazardous Area Response Team (HART), a trauma doctor and critical care paramedic were joined by more than a dozen operational commanders and a number of other senior commanders from the ambulance service during the event to make up more than 50 staff that took part.
Organised by tactical incident commander Greig Smith, emergency planning manager Keith Nevitt and HART training manager Ed Middleton, members of West Mercia Police, Shropshire Fire & Rescue Service and Staffordshire Fire & Rescue Service also took part.
Taking place on Wednesday, the drill in Albrighton came just one day before the largest joint-agency training exercise in the region, which saw the Royal Air Force and the emergency services stage a major incident at Ironbridge Power Station on Thursday.
Tactical Incident Commander Smith said: "It was designed to be an extremely testing exercise and with complex tasks and real challenges for the staff involved.
"It provided a great training opportunity to experience a large-scale multi-agency exercise.
"We were very lucky to be able to have around 90 casualties, some of whom played the part of being very seriously injured.
"These exercises are designed to test our training and always provide learning, but what was absolutely clear was the extraordinary level of commitment from all of those involved, whichever service they were representing.
"This will undoubtedly help us develop our capabilities even further so that we are as prepared as we can be for the future, whatever that may hold."
