Support » Testing & Review
However good the Plan and however helpful the group found the training sessions to be, there’s nothing like a ‘rehearsal’ to make sure volunteer wardens feel confident in tackling the real thing. Severe weather does not respect daylight hours and volunteers can feel quite disorientated working for the first time in darkness, wind and rain. It’s also a good opportunity to make sure that PPE and communication systems are working well.
You might start with a desktop exercise. Sometimes members of the local fire and rescue service, local authority civil contingencies department and Environment Agency are prepared to come along and help with scenarios to test your Plan. This is an opportunity to fine tune what you’ll be doing and communicate your Plan to the wider emergency response sector who will support your community in an incident.