Source: TV3's 'Aftershock'

FOOTAGE of panic and collapsing buildings will bombard Wellington emergency staff to test who will crack under pressure in the event a 7.6 earthquake hits the Capital.

Exercise Phoenix is a two-day disaster simulation carried out by the Civil Defence Emergency Management Group.

Messages will inundate teams, mostly volunteers, who will role-play the planning needed for evacuation, search and recovery, distribution of aid, and restoring life lines after a big earthquake.

To add extra realism to this year’s training environment, news bulletins will appear on screens that show aftershocks collapsing buildings and entrapping people, says Rian van Schalkwyk, manager of the regional CDEMG office.

“If you do the exercise correctly they really get so much into it, they feel as if it is the real thing, they really get bogged down,” he says.

“You see them getting stressed, agitated, some of them copping out because of pressure.”

From left: Alan Walker, Rian van Schalkwyk

Those who become too stressed will need to be put in less tense positions or removed: “You know in a real emergency that’s not going to work.

“[Volunteers] do other jobs during the normal work life and then during an emergency they all of a sudden have to come and sit in an operation centre.

“So they’ve never been exposed to stuff outside, so they don’t know. They don’t know the feel of it,” he says.

Police and other emergency officials taking part will have to deal with unexpected scenarios like protestors at Parliament and looting at supermarkets.

Mr Schalkwyk could not estimate the cost of Exercise Phoenix, but says it required a year of planning requiring many man hours.

The disaster exercise has run annually for 11 years and each year has provided lessons. Last year staff dealt with faulty radio equipment and other communication problems.

Alan Walker, manager of the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, says at the end of the day there is only so much to prepare crews for a real disaster.

“There’s no exercise that can come even fractionally close to simulating a potential real event. An exercise you know its going to finish, you know your decisions don’t actually harm anybody, you know it’s all about learning.”