I survived!

Yes I survived the ‘incident’ or ‘Exercise Clover’ as it was officially named! Woo hoo!

Actually it wasn’t half as bad as I thought it would be. Despite getting woken up at 5am by drunk and noisy people yelling and throwing stuff right outside my window and then having to be in work for 8am on a Sunday...

So it all starts with a nice briefing and no cup of tea as a fuse has blown and the inflatable tent deflated! Then we finally get started...by entering an abandon building and sitting around to wait for a while (that was pretty much the theme of the day: hurry up and wait, and wait, and wait some more...)


After a few unhelpful conversations with police officers (just wait there and help will be here soon...very soon...half an hour later...yep still on their way) we got bored and set the fire alarms off! Then found the library hidden away between abandoned offices and I read turn of the screw for a while...odd book.

Finally we were rescued from the fake chemical spill!! Admittedly by people who looked like they’d just stepped off of the set of some crappy sci fi movie, but it was a change to all the book reading and throwing buckets of sick (water) out of the window.


So then it was time for the dreaded decontamination showers...

Hidden under a giant orange poncho we all had to strip to swimwear. In a real emergency we’d have to strip fully:S Which wouldn’t be a problem under the stylish orange ponchos...but next it’s a hop into a shower tent with 4 other people and bye bye poncho! I would not have liked doing that without my bikini!


Shiny and cleaned and dressed in green scrubs and cheap-plastic-smelling water proofs we finally got free lunch (sandwiches etc) and got to go home...or in our case straight to the pub for a proper lunch. (unfortunately no pics of the lovely green scrubs and waterproofs:( )

All in all, not a bad day and I am now confident that should a major chemical spill endanger the staff at my institute...the emergency services will in no way be ready to deal with it:S From first symptoms and ambulance calling to decontamination we were waiting about 3 & 1/2 hours. Some 'casualties' were able to escape and potentially contaminate the police and anyone else near by. O and seriously injured casualties practically ignored throughout the exercise would probably have died had this been real. A little worrying.

But hopefully they should learn from this event...right? That was the whole point of the exercise.

In the mean time I think I’ll avoid too many potentially hazardous chemicals...

(PS I’m told I shouldn’t have taken any photos of this event...ooops)

What have I done?

I know I said I'd work Drew Fuller:


into the next post (Yes solely to work another 'fitty pic' into the blog, yes I know...) but something far more important has happened...

I got an email earlier this week asking for volunteers to act as casualties in, what was called, a weekend 'incident'... The idea is that all the regional fire departments, ambulances and other rescue services want to practice working together (in case of a real 'incident' requires a multi-agency response) To do this they need volunteers to play with.

I, being the wonderful person that I am (and having been bugged by my friend who couldn't do it herself but really wanted to know what would happen) signed up. O dear.

It turns out that what they want to simulate is a massive chemical spill requiring decontamination of all 'casualties'.

Which in short means that i have to turn up at work at 8am on a Sunday morning (feed my bees) then get ordered around by firemen/paramedics/random others, told to strip off my clothes (it is suggested that we wear a swimming costume for this bit) and then get shoved into a decontamination shower!

At this point I'm starting to regret having signed up...but it gets worse!

I just received a new email this morning stating that they don't have enough volunteers! This means that I may have to go through the whole process twice!!

Help!!


On the funny side (you have to look on the funny side after signing up for something like this) the 'incident' has been named 'Excercise Clover'! Which mostly just makes me think of walking a cow...

If a real emergency should transpire I get to shout 'Excercise Clover for real, for real!' he he. Not that I want there to be a real emergency, but if there is I feel I may be giggling too much to do anything useful.