Major exercise

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency is responsible for a major international maritime exercise taking place in the Channel on Tuesday November 3rd 2009. The multi-agency exercise Manchex 2009 will involve Coastguard and the emergency services from Britain and France.

Manchex is a bi-annual test of the contingency plan developed to deal with major marine emergencies involving the UK Coastguard, French Coastguard and the other emergency services. Manchex 2009 will simulate a fire and an evacuation from a cross channel passenger ferry in the approaches to the Southwest Lane of the Dover Strait.

The maritime incident operations will be co-ordinated from the MCA operations room at Dover Coastguard. A fire fighting team from the Maritime Incident Response Group (MIRG) will be airlifted to the vessel. Casualty reception centres will be set up ashore and emergency services will need to undertake hazardous chemical decontamination of passengers.

MCA Exercise Controller, Spike Hughes at Dover Coastguard says,
A major feature of these exercises is to ensure good communications between all emergency services and the various authorities involved in the English Channel during a major incident. To that end French Coastguards from Gris Nez will work alongside MCA staff in the Dover Coastguard operations room, as well as Kent Police and Kent Fire and Rescue Service, enhancing the learning process and making communications easier.