Explosion onboard Poole ferry (exercise).

A suspected gas leak caused an explosion onboard the Poole ferry Purbeck Princess on 26 July 2007, which left 10 people with multiple injuries and needing urgent medical attention. With 102 people and 3 crew members onboard, panic ensued.

Portland Coastguard coordinated lifeboats from Poole and Swanage stations, along with a two lifeboats on passage to Poole.

But this, thankfully, wasn’t for real – it was a planned medical exercise. Realistic wounds greeted the lifeboat crews when they went onboard and first aiders had to deal with full thickness burns, an open fracture of the lower leg with major bleeding, major blast injuries causing open facial wounds, an open chest injury with an impaled object, a broken arm, a casualty with chest pain, another with an asthma attack and others with multiple minor cuts.

The aim of the exercise was to see how effective the crews were at prioritising the injuries, ensuring that the most severely injured were taken off the ferry and to hospital as quickly as possible. At the same time they also had to ensure that the safety of the other passengers and crew was looked after. All casualties were assessed, triaged and treated and taken off the ferry and onto the lifeboats.

(click on the -thumbnails below to view each picture)

Portland Coastguard helicopter was due to airlift the priority casualties but the weather conditions stopped this happening as it was an exercise. If it had been a real emergency then they would certainly have taken part.
Thankfully this was just an exercise but it demonstrated how effectively the lifeboat and other emergency services communicated with each other and it also tested response times and the training provided to lifeboat crew members.
What was for real was the weather experienced by everyone. At one point the winds were gusting to severe gale force 9 with heavy rain – and the lifeboat crews, casualties and observers got well and truly soaked.

Onboard the Purbeck Princess were over 70 members of the RNLI Council including the Trustees who carry full financial and legal responsibility for everything the RNLI does. The Trustees approve the RNLI strategic and business plans, annual budget and the annual report. They must ensure that everything done by the RNLI is genuinely and solely in pursuit of its objects: ‘first, to save lives, promote safety and provide relief from disaster at sea and, secondly, to save lives, promote safety and provide relief from disaster on inland waters’. It was also good to see RNLI senior managers and other staff members experiencing the conditions that lifeboat crews deal with on a daily basis.

A full debrief of the exercise will follow and there will be lessons learned from it but everybody on Poole lifeboat crew who took part enjoyed the afternoon – despite the stress, adrenalin rush and weather!