DANEX 06:
There are wounded everywhere and the Emergency Management Agency is struggeling to get their many vehicles into the town.

“Please help us – we are dying up here!!” The cry resounds through the thick, black smoke that covers the little port as a blanket. A house in Hvims is quickly burning down and on the first floor of the battered building coughing and screaming people are hanging out of the windows. Everything takes place at the Naval Damage Control School, that is located near the town of Hvims. The school has a ruined town with ships and buildings where fire fighting and rescue operations can be trained.

In co-operation witn Danish, German and Britih naval units the Danish Emergency Management Agency is training relief action following a natural disaster. A so called Disaster Relief Operation (DRO). The Emergency Management Agency was landed this morning from the support ship HDMS ESBERN SNARE and is now working hard to limit the extent of the disaster.

The hurricane Hercules has devastated the area and has opened for plunderings and fire accidents. The streets of the town are filled with severely wounded civilians and their very dissatisfied companions. A group of rescue workers are on their way with a ladder to get people out of the burning building but about 100 role-players are doing their part to stress the hard working fire fighters. Therefore the orange rescue workers must be supported by boarding teams from the ships.

Angry civilians try to steal a car.  Photo: Martin Pedersen, RDN

Angry civilians
The civilians are in panic. They pull at the rescue workers and a few of them even try to steal the characteristic vehicles with the blue triangle, so there is a great need for the armed sailors. Hundred meters from the school the ladder team iss stopped by a group of cross civilians. One of their friends is badly wounded and the want help. The fire fighting however has priority:

“You have to wait a little, you will get help afterwards,” one of the rescue workers shouts, but the civilians won’t listen and armed crewmembers from HMS CORNWALL have to step in and disperse the angry crowd. Luckily the ladder eventually gets to where it is needed and the screaming citizens are rescued.

Orange-blue rescue
The DRO is mainly an exercise to train coordination between the various participating units and everywhere in the disaster area blue Navy uniforms are seen together with the orange suits used by the Emergency Management Agency. Around the Forward Command Element at Jerup Strand both police and Army forces are in action.

A part of the field hospital.  Photo: Martin Pedersen, RDN

The Army’s 5. Logistic Battalion has set up and manned a field hospital where wounded get medical attention when they have been evacuated from the disaster area and police men handle the registration of the wounded which arrive.

“It is of course a sad task but to maintain our society it is important that we keep track of the dead and wounded and the police men are experts at this,” explains Lieutenant Commander Jan Skogøy who leads the Forward Command Element at Jerup Strand. Much of his time is spent talking to the officers from the Emergency Management Agency who control the events at Hvims.

Nayv ‘smoke divers’ feel the heat
The armed security forces are not the only crewmembers in the town. In the middle of the afternoon serious fires start on some of the ships in the harbour and since the Navy has teams of ‘smoke divers’, the sailing fire fighters are called in to get people out of the ships.

Danish smoke divers enter the burning ship while British smoke divers woth fire hoses follow right behind them. For a long time only thing to see is black smoke coming out of every crack in the large hull, but then a hatch is opened and two fire fighters show up. They carry a dummy between them.

Smoke divers on their way into the  burning ship.  Photo: Klaus Randrup, RDN

“Gravel came out of one of the dummies so I guess he is finished,  but we got everybody out,” says Junior Rating Martin V. Jensen from HDMS THETIS after returning to safety ashore. It’s hot in a fire so now he needs some water before he continues to the next ship together with the rest of the team.

At the end of the afternoon the situation is getting more quiet in the small fictive port. Several places flames still lick the buildings and car wrecks but most of the wounded have been transported to the field hospital. However the exercise participants can’t relax yet. The DRO exercise continues until Tuesday morning. At the break of day the last role-players will be evacuated to the warships, waiting in Ålbæk bugt. Then they will be sailed to Naval Base Frederikshavn where the exercise will end.

Text: Martin Pedersen, RDN

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