Exercise Unified Response was a large multi-agency emergency services exercise held near London from 29 February to 3 March 2016. The exercise was conducted at four sites simultaneously across central and south east London, with much of the live action taking place at Littlebrook Power Station, Dartford. The exercise scenario was centred around a building collapse onto

Waterloo station Waterloo station (), also known as London Waterloo, is a major central London railway terminus on the National Rail network in the United Kingdom, in the Waterloo area of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is connected to a London Undergroun ...

during rush hour. An area of the exercise site was prepared with

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...

carriages and rubble from which simulated casualties were extracted by rescue services. The organisation of the exercise was led by

London Fire Brigade The London Fire Brigade (LFB) is the Fire department, fire and rescue service for London, the capital of the United Kingdom. It was formed by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade Act 1865 (28 & 29 Vict. c. 90), under the leadership of superintendent ...

, and the exercise involved around 70 partner agencies, including the

London Ambulance Service The London Ambulance Service NHS Trust (LAS) is an NHS trust responsible for operating ambulances and answering and responding to urgent and medical emergency, emergency medical situations within the Greater London, London region of England. The ...

, the Metropolitan Police,

local authorities Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of governance or public administration within a particular sovereign state. Local governments typically constitute a subdivision of a higher-level political or administrative unit, such a ...

British Red Cross The British Red Cross Society () is the United Kingdom body of the worldwide neutral and impartial humanitarian network the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The society was formed in 1870, and is a registered charity with 1 ...

The Salvation Army The Salvation Army (TSA) is a Protestantism, Protestant Christian church and an international charitable organisation headquartered in London, England. It is aligned with the Wesleyan-Holiness movement. The organisation reports a worldwide m ...

St John Ambulance St John Ambulance is an affiliated movement of charitable organisations in mostly Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth countries which provide first aid education and consumables and emergency medical services. St John organisations are primari ...

, and specialist teams including

Urban search and rescue Urban search and rescue (abbreviated as USAR or US&R) is a type of technical rescue operation that involves the location, extrication, and initial medical stabilization of victims trapped in an urban area, namely structural collapse due to natu ...

and disaster victim identification. The exercise also included activation of the EU civil protection mechanism, with teams arriving from other member countries,

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

and

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

to assist the local emergency services.

References

{{Reflist Emergency services in England Fire and rescue in England