Text entered

Testing, testing – exercising flood staff

A major exercise is being carried out by the Environment Agency to test its improved operational response to a major incident.
What: Exercise Cuckoo - When: Thursday 20 May 2010 - Where: Heybridge and Canvey Island, Essex

Staff from Thames and Anglian regions are working together to test how they would respond if flood protection equipment was damaged.

Updated procedures mean that staff from other areas can be brought in quickly and safely with the appropriate tools and equipment where needed to help neighbouring teams.

Karl Watson, Operations Delivery Manager for Essex said: ‘Our workforce will follow the exercise as if it was a real event and will operate our flood defence structures as they would do in the event of a major flood incident.

‘We aim to test the support our operations teams provide and to make sure that, should we need to call for or provide cross-border support, our teams are acquainted with different working environments.

‘The purpose of this is to test the robustness of our operational procedures and allow us to identify any areas for improvement. We want to make sure that we continuously provide a high standard of service to our customers.’

As part of the exercise tidal flood defence structures on Canvey Island and in the Heybridge area, will be operated, predominantly flood gates. For the purpose of the exercise field teams may be faced with damaged flood gates which can not be closed. They will need to think quickly to find a practical solution, likely to involve constructing sand bag walls to block the gaps in the tidal defences left by these broken gates.

The exercise will come as a surprise to all of the field teams involved. They will use standard equipment and skills they have learnt from incident response training courses and their own experience of real incidents

Mr Watson said: ‘We will endeavour to keep disruption to a minimum throughout this exercise and would thank the local communities for their co-operation and patience.’