Organised by the Johanniter together with the lot 5 Consortium and hosted by the Turkish Ministry of Health, from 18th till 22nd of September, a medical EU MODEX field exercise was held in Canakkale, located in the north-western part of Türkiye - even larger than the last field exercise in Türkiye in 2021.
Modules from eight countries with over 2,000 participants in total were involved in the field exercise. The aim of this exercise was to provide the participating teams and modules with an opportunity to test and practice their preparedness in the context of a full-scale field exercise.
Emergency Medical Teams from Portugal, Romania and Türkiye, a Technical Assistance Support Team (TAST) from Finland, the European Mobile Laboratory from Germany, EURACARE Flight and Shelter (ECFS), EU Expert Team and United Nation Disaster and Coordination Team (EUCPT/UNDAC), a transport capacity from Poland and the Turkish national teams like UMKE medical teams and the public health laboratories all worked hand in hand to ensure an educational and successful exercise.
The scenario planned was an earthquake of magnitude 7.4 RS happening on the 16th of September 2023 at 00:34 a.m. in the Province Canakkale. AFAD, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, declared a level 4 emergency with damaged cell towers and partly destroyed power lines, water pipelines and highways. Two hospitals in the region were severely damaged and therefore unusable. Overall, more than 13,000 buildings were heavily damaged or collapsed, nearly 470,000 people were affected. Around 2,000 people needed to receive treatment on site while more than 27,000 people were in need of temporary shelter.
To keep the focus on the medical site of the exercise, the scenario was further evolved by a group of irregular migrants with symptoms of a respiratory disease, which the EM Lab tested and resulted in the identification of MERS.
Not only medical injects but also blackout scenarios, a fire outbreak in the EMT camps and a car accident kept the teams on a high stress level and tested their capabilities.
A special module under certification for the European Civil Protection Pool was EURACARE Flight and Shelter (ECFS), which was located with a Fokker 100 at the airport of Canakkale.
The role players, who make the injects possible in the first place, have a particularly big influence. For example, the role players at the airport in Canakkale, who portrayed the people who were to be flown out of Türkiye, played so realistically that the practicing team called the police - there were concerns that the situation was getting out of control.
High-ranking representatives such as the Vice President of AFAD and Hanna Jahns also attended the exercise. She is the new director of Directorate B in DG ECHO, which is responsible for the EU MODEX exercises.
This exercise has once again shown that the cooperation of national and international teams must be practiced further, as this increases strongly the efficiency of the aid assistance.
