University buildings used for major emergency exercise practice

On Saturday 5 October, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington’s Kelburn campus will be one of the sites across the Wellington region used for a major emergency exercise.

This exercise, called Exercise Poseidon, sees New Zealand Response Teams from across the North Island come together in Wellington to test their ability to respond to a large-scale emergency event.

Exercise Poseidon is a 36-hour exercise based on a Wellington earthquake scenario. The response teams will test their response capabilities, their inter-team coordination, and their ability to deploy to a different part of Aotearoa.

On campus, you will see uniformed response team members on the city side of Kelburn Parade from Laby and Cotton through to New Kirk looking for simulated hazards and casualty actors. They will then attempt to rescue them in the Maclaurin lecture theatres, the Kirk stairwell, and the Te Toki a Rata building.

Victoria Rescue, which is based at and funded by the university, is one of the eight fully certified response teams involved in the exercise. The exercise is also supported by other Te Herenga Waka students.

“It’s awesome for Victoria Rescue to have the opportunity to be involved in such a large-scale exercise,” says Team Leader and VUW alumnus Andrew Simpkin.

“While we get a chance to train with our fellow Wellington teams fairly regularly, events like our deployment in response to Cyclone Gabrielle identified a clear value in being able to do similar training with the rest of the country before the next major event.”

Wellington Region Emergency Management Office (WREMO) Regional Manager, Jeremy Holmes, says the exercise is a great opportunity for the Response Teams to come together and test their capabilities in responding to a realistic earthquake scenario.

“Working together as one team will be critical to helping support our communities after a disaster,” he explains.

The exercise, which occurs between 4 and 6 October, will be based across 15 distinct sites, practicing light rescue, reconnaissance, impact assessment, intelligence gathering, assisting evacuations, cordon and movement control, supporting Emergency Assistance Centres, undertaking community needs assessments, and water and rope rescue.

Please don’t be alarmed if you are in on Kelburn campus over the weekend and notice marked vehicles, and uniformed people exploring the campus or dangling from ropes with safety gear on—they are there practicing so they are ready for the next large-scale disaster.