Exercising Chaos

YVR -

YVR - Crash on the Coast Exercise

It was the morning of April 15, 2008, a cool and windy chill ran through the Richmond delta. Members of Unit 10 responded to a paged alert advising of a mid-air collision of two aircraft, west of the YVR runway. The resultant scene included two locations, one on the runway and the other on the foreshore of the western approaches.

Within forty minutes of alert, the unit was arriving on scene to carryout several concurrent tasks. Auxiliary 7 had been tasked to provide a seaward barrier to the west of the water based incident, searching the debris field for survivors and establishing a cordon to restrict spectators.  Auxiliary 6 was tasked to establish a transfer ferry on the middle arm, deliver the base support team, and then later, tasked to commence an expanded search of the water scene.

The base support team is comprised of Unit 10 members tasked with shore duties at the Hovercraft base. This team provides assistance to base Ops by providing apron control, gate control, escort and runners.

This was the first time Unit 10 had deployed this degree of support to an aircraft down exercise.  Although challenging from the perspective of weather, personnel resources available, and the many agencies and interests operating concurrently; Unit 10 delivered on their commitment at every call.

Markus von Berg (coxswain in training), “It was good to have the opportunity to go through the motions as Coxswain”.

The exercise lasted until the early afternoon evaluating the response agencies all the way through the initial response, triage and treatment process. RCMP, Richmond Fire, YVR emergency services, YVR EOC, Coast Guard, Auxiliary and many volunteers participated to the fullest, taking away valuable lessons as to their role should this ever happen.

We all train to ensure our individual and collective readiness is up to the measure when called upon to perform; “Unit 10 did a great job”, Einer Tobiasen (Hovercraft Exercise Director).

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