Emergency services carry out rescue training

A large-scale training exercise has taken place for emergency services to build relations and learn lessons.

Emergency services searched for a man near the cliff path in the training exercise in the La Vallette area of Guernsey.

All of the island's emergency services were involved and organisers said personnel searched on foot and used a coastguard heat-sensor drone.

John Atkins, head of resilience and education at Ambulance & Rescue Guernsey, said the services were deliberately given very vague information by a caller.

He said: "It's all about learning lessons, things never quite go according to plan, it's the very nature of our work.

"The key thing here is to learn and make those changes, so that next time it happens for real, we're in a better position to respond more effectively."

The emergency services train together about six times a year, as often more than one emergency service is required at an incident.

Dave Hodge, from Civil Protection, said: "On an island the size of Guernsey we're obviously geographically limited as to where we can get additional resources from, so having a close working relationship between all the services and knowing where you can get the additional assets and resources from is invaluable when it comes to a situation like this."

Alex Clarke, fire service watch commander, said: "We train a few times a year with cliff rescue. They are part of the Guernsey Fire and Rescue Service, they are an amazing asset to us, they are all volunteers and we're very lucky to have them.

"This is the first time we've done any training in darkness with them, so there will be a lot of learning that comes out of this."

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