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Title: Working To Keep You Safe Subtitle: Council And Police Conduct Live Rest Exercise Author: DMBC  ID & Publication: 20070611038 ~ The-Villager.co.uk  Area: Doncaster  Subject: Council News

Earlier today, [Thursday, 21 June 2007] Doncaster Council conducted an emergency planning rest centre exercise ‘Operation Solstice’, when it turned Lakeside Community Church into a live rest centre as it acted out an evacuation scenario.

The aim of the annual exercise was to work with partners including South Yorkshire Police and St John’s Ambulance to test Doncaster’s Rest Centre Protocol and to make sure that staff were equipped to deal with and respond to the needs of the evacuees and community – should an evacuation ever occur and a rest centre be needed.

Mayor Martin Winter explained: ‘The scenario that staff were presented with in the exercise, was actually a similar scene to a real life situation that we were faced with a few years ago when a densely populated residential area had to be evacuated when builders uncovered an unexploded WWII bomb in a garden. The whole area had to be evacuated and cordoned off and residents had to be taken to a secure rest centre whilst the situation was resolved.

Graham Cassidy, Chief Superintendent for Doncaster District commented: ‘Rest centres ensure that the needs of evacuees needing temporary accommodation or shelter, due to an incident or emergency, are effectively met thorough our rest centre provision arrangements. This exercise enabled us to test these arrangements and we were extremely pleased with how staff responded to the situation.’

Mayor Winter continued: ‘It is our responsibility to make sure that we have plans in place, to enable us to respond to any possible situation. We work closely with South Yorkshire Police to develop and test these plans and we were delighted with the way this exercise took place as it demonstrated the effective communication between our emergency control centre and staff at the rest centre.’

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