Exercise Overwhelming Odds - 10th August 2007

Late afternoon on the 10th of August the pagers go off and that is the start of the NZ-RT11 and NZ-RT14 Exercise Overwhelming Odds. The exercise is based on an airplane crash on approach to Christchurch airport. The plane has crashed mainly intact but many of the victims have left the aircraft and have wandered off and can’t be found.

NZ-RT11 was called to the Omaka Scout Camp to start the search. We set up our Site Control and Triage, got communications working, and gear sorted, then proceeded to start a reconnaissance of the area. We had a small stream that flowed through the middle of the site with many little bridges that crossed it, some native bush and a few small building scattered around the site. We could hear people screaming out for help but it was very hard to locate them. The site was huge in the dark. NZ-RT14 arrived on the scene and we started to do a very large contact search to try and locate victims. What made life easer was having the caretaker of the site draw us a map of the area which we divided up into about 10 different areas using the bridges as landmarks to show teams where their boundaries were.

It did not take long for the triage to become overwhelmed with a lot of walking wounded. Out of the 30 or so casualties we had four that were serious. The rest of the victims had cuts and bruises and was more a baby sitting task while the triage waited for transport to take them away from the site. As the exercise wound down, the pack up started and we all got home about 0130 hours.

It was a good night and NZ-RT11 and NZ-RT14 worked really well together. It shows that the RT’s are able to work together and complete a task as one team under the control of one team leader. A big thank you to Corey Shelton, Section Leader from NZ-RT11, who organized the exercise, with help of Steve Davis (RT11). Also thank you to the casualties and other helpers that were there on the night. If it was not for them we wouldn’t have had such a great exercise.

Paul (KILO) Davenport
Team Leader
NZ-RT11

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