Three team members attended an exercise organised by the Greater Manchester Resilience Training and Exercising Co-ordinating Group today at the Middleton Arena, Middleton, Rochdale.

Deputy Team Leader Geoff Seddon, experienced Team Member Fred Taylor and Training Officer Elaine Gilliland were invited to participate in Exercise Watermark to test and validate the 10 Greater Manchester Borough Plans, examine how each interacts with other Boroughs and with the GM Strategic Flood Plans.

Also participating in the Exercise were the ten Greater Manchester Borough Councils, Greater Manchester Police, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, North West Ambulance Service, Greater Manchester Health Protection Unit, Met Office, Environment Agency, United Utilities, Armed Forces, and a number of the voluntary agencies.

The exercise was run as a real life / real time scenario and after a short introduction by Inspector June Roby we were informed of weather conditions by the Met Office and Environment Agency.

The whole day was given over to real time issues and the objectives were to examine how the Borough Flood Plans link to the Strategic Flood Plan, examine the responses triggered by the various warnings / events and to test the interaction with, and develop an understanding of county / regional agencies and their allocation of resources.

The exercise was informative and allowed a thorough understanding by all of how each agency addresses the warnings and how they would interact with each other should an event happen. It also allowed an excellent opportunity to network with other agencies with which there is often no opportunity to liaise.

Geoff, Fred and Elaine would like to thank the organisers for the invitation to the exercise on behalf of Bolton Mountain Rescue Team.