Emergency Services in Denmark Test the SINE Critical Communications Network

With a lot of messages over the SINE TETRA radios, blue flashes and emergency vehicles, an emergency drill was held at Kalundborg Refinery in February.

With a lot of messages over the SINE TETRA radios, blue flashes and emergency vehicles, an emergency drill was held at Kalundborg Refinery in February. More than 160 people from the refinery, Central and West Zealand Police, West Zealand Fire Service and the Emergency Management Agency participated in the exercise, and throughout the day the focus was on training the cooperation and communication between the refinery's own emergency services and the local emergency services.

The National Police's Center for Emergency Communications (CFB) participated as an exercise evaluator with a focus on the use of the SINE radio network.

During the exercise, several different scenarios were trained, which the participants were not familiar with. Common to all scenarios was that they were complex and placed great demands on cooperation and radio communication.

"The SINE radios are an important tool in emergency operations. Here, the emergency services must know which talk groups (channels) to communicate on and how to speak appropriately on the radio, so that, for example, you give short and precise messages, use the correct dispatch words and use the phonetic alphabet. We were trained in all these things during the exercise in Kalundborg",

says Mikael Rahn, who is police commissioner and SINE officer at Midt- and Vestsjælland's Police.

Kalundborg Refinery is Denmark's largest refinery and processes up to 5.5 million tonnes of crude oil, condensate and mixed product each year. The company is connected to SINE under an emergency management recommendation from West Zealand's Fire Service and thus has access to SINE radios, so that the refinery's own emergency services can quickly communicate with the emergency authorities in the event of a major accident at the company.

Some larger objects in Denmark, such as airports and larger companies, have been assigned a fixed accident site set, which is a set of lateral talk groups (channels) in the radio network SINE for the lateral communication of the emergency services.

"In the event of incidents at Kalundborg Refinery, we use a fixed accident site set, and this means that already during the approach, we tune the radios to a predetermined talkgroup on SINE, which the emergency management from the police, rescue and health services use to communicate together, and where the refinery's own emergency response is also on, so that tactical planning and communication can take place here",

says Mikael Rahn.

The exercise in Kalundborg is important for the cooperation between the refinery and the local emergency services, and the learning points of the exercise, including observations about the SINE communication, are now being evaluated, so that the emergency services and the refinery can stay sharp and become even better going forward.