Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana said,“Exercise Hades is a scenario based exercise that was held to test the ability of government agencies to respond quickly and cohesively to the occurrence of a significant terrorist event in
CFA supported the MFB-led HAZMAT operation, with incident control being exercised by Victoria Police. CFA were led in the field by Operations Officer Graham Bertram (CFA Commander) and flanked by Acting Operations Officer
50 recruit firefighters from Fiskville on courses 1/2012 and 2/2012 participated in the exercise alongside their instructors, performing role play as passengers on the aircraft and as family members of passengers waiting in the airport terminal.
Attorney-General Nicola Roxon applauded efforts by all emergency services, saying, “It’s important for us to test our readiness in case of attacks on our community, and Exercise Hades 12 is a great example of multi-agency collaboration.”
Operations Officer Tony O’Day coordinated CFA’s involvement in the exercise and worked with the Attorney-General’s Department, Victoria Police and other agencies to deliver the training opportunity to CFA crews. He said, “I was extremely proud of the professionalism of all CFA personnel involved in the exercise. They tackled the challenges that the exercise presented to them with confidence and it was impressive to see our highly-skilled crews working so well alongside MFB and the other agencies to perform a large-scale decontamination and recovery exercise”.
The exercise was supported by a team of evaluators, including Acting Operations Officer (Specialist Response) Daryl Owen and Steven Myers from CFA’s Research and Evaluation team, who were keeping a close eye on CFA’s interoperability with MFB, ARFF, and Victoria Police, focusing particular attention to issues around command, control and equipment compatibility.
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