An EU modules field exercise in Austria tested urban search and rescue, cave search and rescue teams and a drone assessment team in an earthquake scenario that simulated damaged buildings and missing victims in a cave.
Teams from five countries tested their ability to work together in the event of a major earthquake in an EU country in need of support from the Union Civil Protection Mechanism.
An EU modules field exercise in Austria has tested urban search and rescue (USAR) and cave search and rescue modules and other response capacities in an earthquake scenario that simulated a damaged school and trapped cavers. Those teams were supported operationally by the assessment drone team.
Teams from Austria, Poland, Slovenia, Spain and France joined the exercise, which tested what could happen when a public buildings have been badly damaged in an earthquake, trapping children and adults inside, and cavers have become trapped inside a cave system.
For the USAR modules from Austria and Poland and the cave search and rescue teams from Slovenia and Spain, their response centred around a museum, mine office buildings, car parking, and a school. In the scenario, buildings had been damaged by the earthquake and the teams had to locate and rescue victims.
In the cave rescue part of the exercise, teams from Slovenia and Spain were up in the mountains to enter a cave, search for the missing cavers and evacuate those victims safely outside the cave.
All the teams involved tested their capabilities, operating procedures and equipment but also – what’s even more important - to work together, in the same place, combining their efforts to rescue victims.
"The earthquake scenario was challenging for the exercise participants. The cave search and rescue capacities worked in an extremely difficult cave system and the USAR modules, supported by a drone team, located and rescued victims in buildings that had been destroyed. Then all five teams came together to search for and rescue trapped children in a severely damaged school.
And having the certification of a module as part of this exercise meant that as well the civil protection pool gaining a valuable new asset, the team could train in a realistic scenario.”
EU modules field exercises test teams and equipment in their readiness for disaster and their ability to work together in an international format, which would happen if a country requested support in disaster response through the Union Civil Protection Mechanism.
An emergency remote piloted aerial system from France was also put through its paces during the exercise in Austria, to examine its usefulness in an earthquake scenario and its readiness to become part of the joint pool of resources used by countries requesting support through the Mechanism.
