Joint response to major 999 calls

Wednesday 18 June 2014

The Island’s emergency services will all be talking the same language when dealing with major incidents to help them respond more efficiently.

The police, honoraries, fire and ambulance services and coastguard are getting national training which has been adopted across the UK since the 7/7 bombings - and which they will have to put it into practice next year when they are tested on how they deal with a major incident.

Jersey’s Emergency Planning Officer Joseph Carnegie said: “All emergency services use different processes so that, for example, the fire service and ambulance service will both carry out a risk assessment of a situation but using different methods.

“Having standardised systems is likely to speed up the process of decision-making as an incident escalates because if we have the same terminology and the same briefings, decisions will take less time to make.”

Around 30 people have gone on the course developed by the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme (JESIP), who will then pass on their training to all local emergency services staff.

Mr Carnegie said: “Building on our experience, and developing procedures based on best practice, enable the emergency services to operate together in a more organised, structured and practiced way at a major incident.

“We won’t necessarily adopt all of the UK’s standards; we will tailor them to our needs and our intention is to adopt the same principles across the Channel Islands.”