ASTRID Tests Emergency Communications at Walibi - TETRA has fulfilled its task perfectly

Operator of the Belgian Critical Communications Network ASTRID recently conducted a major disaster exercise at the Walibi amusement park,which lasted more than six hours.

An accident on a roller coaster, followed by a fire in the 4D cinema: this is what the dramatic scenario looked like for the disaster exercise on 25 April in the Walibi amusement park in Wavre. Nearly 500 people were involved in the large-scale and multidisciplinary simulation, which lasted more than six hours.

What was the goal?

"With this exercise, Walibi can test the internal emergency plan of the amusement park and call in all emergency services involved in the context of a provincial emergency plan: fire brigade, medical and psychosocial emergency services, police, Civil Protection, Defense and Walibi staff itself," says Major Yves Storder, responsible for Operational Support of the Assistance Zone Walloon Brabant. He continues; "Each discipline has its own specific characteristics and in a crisis situation every second counts. Operational coordination and communication between the disciplines and with the authorities are therefore essential."

Hence the importance of radio communication: “Everyone has their own specific role on the ground, which makes it difficult to get together every ten minutes for a state of affairs. Thanks to the multidisciplinary coordination groups provided for in the fleet mapping, the various responsible parties can communicate via TETRA. So did the steering team, which was responsible for ensuring that the entire operation ran smoothly. My role was to evaluate the communication and correct use of the groups, provide feedback from the field and report all relevant information. This way the scriptwriters can make adjustments and further develop the exercise."

Positive final balance

“In such an exercise you have to comply with certain agreements. The use of multidisciplinary groups is not yet fully established," admits Yves Storder. "A few things didn't go quite right in that area. Every discipline is drilled to react in a certain way, and sometimes agreements were forgotten. We also lost track at a certain point because communication took place in other groups than foreseen. It took some time to rectify that, after all we couldn't afford to shut everything down. But that is also part of the exercise: looking at what went less well, in order to perform better in the future. What we have to remember is that the groups have been used very quickly in the context of operational cooperation. And that TETRA has made this interdisciplinary communication possible.”

From a purely technical point of view, there were no problems at all to report.

Yves Storder: "TETRA has fulfilled its task perfectly, both for intra- and interdisciplinary voice communication in the field and for cooperation with the crisis center. We have also used BLM for everything related to the dissemination of data and images or the activation of drones and bodycams. We are in an area with good coverage, both geographically and in terms of capacity. No defects have been reported."