Exercise Clover in safe hands

On Sunday, June 13, the East of England Ambulance Service hazardous area response team (HART), were invited along to a secret location in Harpenden, to take part in an exercise being run by four of the six Fire & Rescue Services which operate within the East of England.

The scenario was a water leak in a office block. The leak resulted in a number of boxes from a previous occupier getting wet. At the time it was not known the boxes contained a mixture of chemicals used to kill rodents from gardens, once wet these chemicals became active and as staff moved these boxes so they started to become unwell. In total 200 people where affected by the contaminate in the boxes.

Arriving emergency resources quickly identified the incident as a chemical incident and the necessary systems were put in place to mobilise the necessary emergency service resources needed to work in a hot zone and to decontaminate patients. The HART team worked in breathing apparatus and limited life gas tight suits with the Fire and Rescue Service, and the Police, to firstly identify and then treat those seriously ill at the scene. Patients were then moved from the scene and fire fighters from Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex and Hertfordshire ensured everyone was decontaminated.

HART manager, Steven Moore, who attended the exercise said: "The exercise had been designed to test the working of four different fire services all undertaking decontamination as well as to ensure that those responders from the police, ambulance and fire who entered the hot zone were all working to common safe systems of work."