Emergency teams gathered for high rise fire evacuation exercise at Pleasley Vale

​Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service carried out the training, with a number of partner organisations at the Pleasley Vale Business Park on Sunday, September 26.

The exercise aimed to test the service’s new evacuation procedures which were updated following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, when 72 people died and many others were injured in a shocking blaze that swept through the high rise building at Kensington, in London in June, 2017.

The training took place at the six-storey former textile mill on Outgang Lane and involved 15 fire engines, six fire officers, numerous firefighters and up to 60 volunteers acting as live casualties.

It also involved Derbyshire and Leicestershire’s Fire and Rescue Services, Nottinghamshire Police, Nottinghamshire County Council, Bolsover District Council and others.

A statement from the Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service said the procedures could help to make sure the service could be “more effectively serve people living in high-rise buildings.”

NFRS’s Chris Emmott, group manager – risk and assurance, said the exercise “put into practice the new procedures following the tragic loss of life during the fire at Grenfell Tower.

“This exercise will really test our firefighters on evacuating large numbers of residents from high-rise buildings and prepare us for any future incidents of a similar nature.”

The county’s fire service has already introduced equipment such as smoke hoods and smoke curtains, particularly useful for evacuating residents of high-rise buildings.