Emergency Services Excercise Onboard Armorique

An exercise, named Exercise Piran, will test the emergency services response to a fire at sea between Roscoff and Plymouth on Wednesday, 13 May. The exercise will involve the Brittany Ferries ship, MV Armorique, which will report a fire via a distress call on VHF radio. The ships Captain will request firefighting assistance.

This exercise is designed to exercise the deployment of the Maritime Incident Response Group (MIRG) by Royal Navy helicopter to a seagoing vessel. Other organisations involved will include the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), Brixham MRCC, Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service, and Brittany Ferries.

There are fifteen MIRG teams who provide cover for the United Kingdoms coastline for incidents involving fires, hazardous materials and industrial accidents. After initial alerting by the Captain to the Coastguard, MIRG personnel respond to pager messages and ensure they are equipped and ready to fly within 60 minutes. The MIRG are all volunteers who, in addition to learning practical ship firefighting are trained in water sea survival, helicopter underwater escape, helicopter operations, winching and use of the extensive equipment provided by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and Fire Service specifically for the MIRG.
Peter Davies, Rescue Co-ordination Centre Manager at HM Coastguard, Brixham says:

We are delighted that Brittany Ferries have offered their vessel MV Armorique as a platform to enable a multi-agency exercise to test our local MIRG call out procedures. The MIRG now forms an integral part of the United Kingdoms search and rescue response. Exercise Piran will ensure the local MIRG teams gain valuable experience and information to ensure training objectives are achieved and skillsets are maintained to a high level.
Area Manager Steve Brown of Cornwall Fire and Rescue says:

Regular exercises with shipping companies, and partner emergency services allow us to test our training and offshore procedures. This gives us a better understanding of each others roles, which ultimately makes sea travel safer.

Thanks to the various agencies taking part in UK MIRG and exercises like this, the UK has the worlds most advanced procedures and plans for firefighting at sea. The Sea of Change project was formed to set up 15 MIRG teams to provide this response from strategic locations, one of these being Cornwall. Our thanks go to Brittany Ferries for allowing us to exercise onboard their ship.

Maria Hammett, General Manager, Brittany Ferries Plymouth, says:
We are delighted that we are to assist the emergency services in this offshore firefighting exercise. All our crews exercise safety procedures regularly and this gives us an opportunity to test our procedures where further support is required from a MIRG team in a firefighting situation. Our number one priority is for the safety of the many thousands of passengers that we carry on our services across the seas around the UK.

Released: 13th May 2009