The creation of a large scale road traffic accident scenario to help Emergency Services prepare for disasters.
Emergency Services from Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow have been staging the country's biggest ever simulated emergency response bringing together the Gardaí, fire and ambulance officers, mountain rescue and the Aer Corps.
The event, organised by the Eastern Regional Ambulance Service, saw dozens of ambulance crews attend the scene of a supposed major road traffic accident in Dublin.
According to this scenario, a petrol tankard has overturned in Dublin colliding with a number of vehicles including a minibus. There are around seventy people injured.
While today is make-believe, the emergency crew know that one day this might be a real-life scenario.
Colm Megan of the Eastern Regional Ambulance Services describes the simulated response as
Quite a realistic scenario. We're actually preparing for the inevitable.
The main priorities of the exercise were to check the response time of the crews arriving at the scene of the accident, treating the injured and air-lifting the most seriously ill to hospital.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 16 August 2003. The reporter is Barry Cummins.
