Dec 02 - Gibraltar's Emergency Services Take Part In GibEx Exercise
Emergency services across Gibraltar were once again put to the test during this year’s GibEx exercises, which was deemed a success.
The annual exercise is designed to try and merge all essential services and key partners in Gibraltar to challenge all their disciplines, with more than 100 personnel taking part in yesterday’s real-life situations.
Detective Superintendent Ian McGrail talked through this year’s tasks, which included actors taking part in a search and rescue scenario at sea which enlisted maritime services, followed by a health crisis and immigration crisis merged into one, and national security-related scenarios that dealt with a potential terrorist threat to Gibraltar and a big traffic accident, which warranted attention from the Royal Gibraltar Police.
He said: “The main thing here was to see how command structures stood up, from right at the very bottom right up to where His Excellency and the Chief Minister stand, which is the very top of the hierarchy.
“It was to give effect to the newly-named Gibraltar Contingency Committee. They were stood up and the communication and command centre at the bunker and each agency responded accordingly.
“That complicated itself with a terrorist incident that required mass response and mass mobilization of personnel across all the agencies represented here.”
All emergency services put their skills to practice during the exercise held at the Rooke site yesterday. The Borders and Coastguard Agency, HM Customs, the GHA and civil co-ordinator Leslie Edmonds were also involved, with Minister Neil Costa chairing the Gold Group from the Bunker in Number Six.
Major Simon Dyson from the MOD, who led the exercise this year, said: “GibEx traditionally has been an annual MOD exercise but over the last few years it has started to focus on how we can support the other emergency services.
“From an MOD perspective we will look at our role in Gibraltar and testing our ability to support the troops coming from the UK, who may be launching in Africa and other parts of the region and our ability to support them.
“Secondary to that it is testing our ability and supporting our resilience in the wider part of Gibraltar.”
From the MOD perspective, Major Dyson said all the services are competent to fulfill their roles in this exercise. Within the MOD, they have seen the changes to be able to work collaboratively with all the other emergency services, and they will have to learn from this year’s exercises and put it into perspective next year.
Superintendent Cathal Yeats, of the Royal Gibraltar Police, said the objectives were different for last year’s exercises but this year the full command chain had to be tested, including His Excellency the Governor Lt Gen Edward Davis and the Chief Minister Fabian Picardo. He said most players were happy with the way communication worked.
Andrew Girada from the Ambulance Service said it was much more challenging this year, with three different scenarios rolled into one.
Divisional Officer Matthew Payas from the Gibraltar Fire and Rescue Service saw his colleagues involved with the major road traffic accident, and there were lots of learning opportunities.
The Gibraltar Port Authority took part in the drill search and rescue incident, and Deputy Captain of the Port Manuel Tirado said they put into practice the health protocols for any crew member coming from abroad.
He added: “We are very close to Africa so that poses a real threat to Gibraltar. The fact that we have a number of illegal immigrants crossing the Straits practically on a daily basis, that gives us the opportunity to polish our skills and make sure that our plans are adequate for any scenario. In addition, we had a real-life scenario of a search and rescue at sea at the same time, and we were able to cope with both the exercises together with the RGP, HM Customs, Environment and the Royal Navy to search our waters.”
Detective Superintendent McGrail said: “In Gibraltar we have the added advantage of knowing each other’s faces and bonding, that confidence, that other jurisdictions probably don’t have and this transposes to public security and public safety.”
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