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The Global Search & Rescue Excellence Awards, organised by Fire Knowledge, the publisher of FIRE magazine, recognise and celebrate the achievements of search and rescue teams, volunteers, organisations and suppliers who work so tirelessly to ensure we can respond in someone’s moment of need.
The Service’s Site Specific Risk Information (SSRI) Team are up for ‘Innovator of the Year’ award and Watch Manager Shane Saunders is up for ‘Project of the Year’ for the facilitation of a large-scale training exercise involving multiple fire and rescue services and agencies.
The SSRI Team are responsible for identifying operational risks within the Service area and collecting risk information that is made available to our operational crews responding to incidents and in our Control Room. Site visits, undertaken primarily by fire crews and assisted by the SSRI Team , and the consequent documentation created, are essential in ensuring that firefighters attending incidents are aware of any potential risks and can respond as quickly, and safely, as possible.
“The SSRI Team have worked extremely hard to produce an exceptional product which creates up to 50 pages of detailed information for each site, replacing the Service’s previous programme. Central to the product is the use of computer aided design (CAD) to give accurate site details, and digitising everything from the booking to the end plans. It is a continuous development programme so we are always looking to try and improve the system for the end user, building in the feedback crews have provided. We now have over 1,000 sites either published, in progress or awaiting a visit, all aimed to improve safety for crews and quicker incident resolutions.”
Seán Heighton, Group Manager – Risk Management at AF&RS
Watch Manager Shane Saunders, based at Hicks Gate Fire Station and Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Team Leader, has been shortlisted for leading on a large-scale training exercise to practice our response to a major incident.
The three-day training exercise, hosted at Cotswold Airport, involved multiple scenarios, including a plane crash, a terrorist attack, trapped casualties and the discovery of an identified device and suspected nerve agent. As part of this training, the police declared Operation Plato and Operation Tapestry – rarely exercised – in response to the staged terrorist attacks.
Firefighters from Avon, Gloucestershire, Dorset & Wiltshire, West Midlands and Hereford & Worcester Fire & Rescue Service, as well as Cotswold Airport, worked collaboratively with police, ambulance, and military colleagues to respond to several casualties seeking medical assistance. Members of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) were also in attendance.
“I’m so pleased that this training exercise has been recognised in the Global Search & Rescue Excellence Awards. Thanks to the hard work and commitment of a number of hardworking individuals – internally and externally – we were able to provide an exciting and unique opportunity for fire crews and agencies to practice their response to a major incident involving aircrafts.
“It was three years in the making as we wanted to ensure there was plenty for everyone in attendance to properly apply their knowledge, experience, and skills to different scenarios – and it was successful in doing that. The exercise is now embedded in Military Aid to the Civil Authorities’ (MACA) annual training diary”
Shane Saunders, Watch Manager at AF&RS
The Global Search & Rescue Excellence Awards will be hosted on 16 May at One Great George Street in London. For more information, and to read the shortlist of nominations in full, visit the Global Search & Rescue Excellence Awards website.