UK hosts international DVI drill
Specialist policing teams from across the UK will be taking part in Europes biggest ever disaster training exercise.
Specialist policing teams from across the UK will be taking part in Europes biggest ever disaster training exercise.
Exercise Unified Response begins today (February 29) and will see Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) teams from all UK police regions work alongside odontologists forensic dentists, pathologists and radiographers who make up the UKs DVI capability.
The exercise part funded by the European Commission Exercise Programme and coordinated by the London Fire Brigade on behalf of the London Resilience Partnership will see blue light services working alongside more than 70 partner agencies including local councils, utility companies and specialist search and rescue teams to respond to a staged scenario of a building collapsing onto an underground station.
In total, more than 250 DVI personnel will be working at the scene and in a specially constructed temporary mortuary.
Experts from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Italy and Spain will also be involved.
National Policing lead for DVI Chief Constable Debbie Simpson said, while victim identification is never a pleasant subject to discuss, it is unfortunately a reality.
When disaster strikes families need to be confident that the authorities are doing everything they can to identify their loved ones in a dignified and respectful way, whilst supporting any criminal investigation, she said.
This process cannot be hurried. As frustrating as this can sometimes be, especially in a world of fast paced mainstream and social media, we have to be meticulous in our approach to ensure we achieve reliable scientific identification.
Its not often we get to test working practices on such a scale and its really positive to see so many of our European colleagues involved. Effective evaluation and debriefing will help highlight good practice and any areas for development.
The UK National DVI Unit, which sits within the National Police Coordination Centre, works with police services, government departments, local authorities and other agencies to coordinate the national capability of the police service to respond to incidents involving mass fatalities.
UK DVI teams have previously deployed to numerous international disasters, including to the Ukraine following the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in July 2014 and domestically to the Shoreham Air disaster in August 2015.