Exercise Falcon

The New Zealand Defence Force’s emergency responders have been sharpening their skills to ensure they are well trained to combat rural fires and challenging motor vehicle accidents.

Exercise Falcon 2020 was a combined services/organisations wildfire exercise conducted in Waiouru Military Training Area.

“The aim of the exercise was to replicate domestic and international operations in a wildfire environment,” said Staff Sergeant Daniel Klaassen, deputy fire chief Emergency Response Troop Waiouru.

“Exercise participants were tested in core rural tasks including initial fire suppression, prescribed vegetation burning, remote area fire team operations, working with aircraft at wildfires, working with heavy machinery and night operations.”

Senior personnel were also put through their paces as Incident Management Team members, co-ordinating all resources in real time during the live fire training aspects of the exercise.

This year things were a little different. Early in the planning stage of the exercise it was decided to use this opportunity as pre-deployment training prior to Operation Vulcan, a NZDF wildfire deployment.

RNZAF firefighters were also included in the numbers to increase exposure and skill sets across the board and Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) were approached to be part of the exercise. FENZ also provided urban and rural staff, area management personnel and the USAR drone team. This meant an already strong relationship and mutual training practices between the two organisations were further developed. 25ESS Plant Operators established fire control lines with a bulldozer as part of the indirect firefighting phases which allowed ground crews extra experience working around heavy machinery, said SSGT Klaassen.

“By all accounts, the exercise proved to be a success. It provided participants from NZ Army, RNZAF and FENZ with experience that is impossible to gain anywhere else in New Zealand. This collaboration means we can further develop world class wildfire training for emergency services from NZDF and FENZ.”

After the rural fire training the Waiouru team also completed some advanced entrapment rescue training that replicated some of the most challenging car crash scenarios.

SSGT Klaassen and some of the other senior emergency responders spent some time recreating scenes around Waiouru that the team may encounter on the Desert Road to make sure they were challenged and had to think carefully to solve complex problems safely and successfully.

“You can’t just dive into these situations. You need to look critically, think quickly and analyse the scene and make decisions that will give the best result in a safe environment.

“You have to make it as lifelike as possible. You don’t get this level of training from reading a book.”

The emergency responders were then allowed to decipher the challenge and develop the best method for a successful rescue under the watchful eye of FENZ regional training officer Chris Kennedy.