A live exercise took place in Cardiff Bay on Wednesday, April 2, beginning at 10am.
Cardiff Harbour Authority worked in partnership with Cardiff Council, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, South Wales Police, South Wales Fire and Rescue Service, The Welsh Ambulance Trust, Royal National Lifeboat Institution and Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, to deliver the largest multi-agency exercise taking place in Wales in 2014.
The planned marine based exercise was designed to test all elements of emergency response including the sliver and bronze chain of command in real time, 999 control rooms, maritime co-ordination, asset response and media management.
Planning for the event was many months in the making and organisers sought to assure residents of Cardiff Bay as well as the business community that it was just an exercise, so not to be alarmed by any activity that took place on the water on that day.
Councillor Bob Derbyshire, Cabinet Member for Environment, hosted a group of observers on the water, close to where the live exercise took place. Cllr Derbyshire said, “This was planned to test our emergency responses and we hoped not to cause alarm. It is essential that we test our ability to respond to major incidents and it was good to see everyone working together to achieve this. We returned the bay back to normal as soon as possible.”
The Cardiff Bay Barrage was closed for the duration of the exercise to all pedestrians and cyclists from 9.30am until 3.30pm.
