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One final multi-agency emergency exercise will take place in the City Rail Link’s underground stations and tunnels this week, ahead of the CRL opening to passengers September 13
Fire and Emergency New Zealand, New Zealand Police and Hato Hone St John will work alongside train and station staff to simulate a fire on a train near Te Waihorotiu Station.
While not a formal requirement, the exercise provides another valuable opportunity for emergency responders to work together and strengthen preparedness in the new underground environment.
Hato Hone St John Area operations manager, Kim Moser, says these realistic exercises help ensure emergency services are well prepared to respond safely and effectively if they are needed once the CRL opens.
“For Hato Hone St John, this testing has been an important opportunity for our ambulance personnel to build familiarity with the CRL’s new underground environment and practise coordinated responses alongside our emergency service and transport partners.”
The exercise builds on an extensive emergency testing programme completed last month, which involvedmore than 1,400 volunteer passengers and tested responses to a range of realistic scenarios including train derailments, stationfiresand mass evacuations.
Auckland Transport (AT) Rail Services general manager, Mark Lambert, says the programme has provided confidence the City Rail Link is ready to welcome Aucklanders when it opens September 13.
“The City Rail Link is unlike anything else in New Zealand’s rail network, so it has been vital for everyone involved to practise how we would respond in a range of different situations. The strong collaboration between emergency services and our rail partners has helped build confidence that Aucklanders will be well supported should an incident ever occur.”
The tests were comprehensive and looked atfrontline responses through tothesupporting systems behind the scenes, including ventilation and smoke extraction, alarms, communications, CCTV,lightingand control room operations.
KiwiRail leads and coordinates emergency response to incidents in the CRL tunnels via its AucklandRail Operations Centre. Auckland One Rail responds to unplanned events on trains and in the CRL stations – with the assistance of emergency services as needed.
“The City Rail Link’s underground environment, with tunnels more than 40 metres below ground in some parts, presents unique challenges around access, evacuation and communication, requiring specialist planning and coordination,” says Patrick Brockie, City Rail Link Ltd chief executive.
“I want to thank every single person who’s played a part in this mammoth effort to ensure Aucklanders can travel with confidence, knowing they’ll be well taken care of should the unexpected ever happen in our new stations and tunnels.”
Around 200 personnel and more than 50 emergency service vehicles took part across the programme, working together to test how the system performs when it matters most.
15 live exercises were carried out, ranging from smaller drills through to large-scale scenarios involving more than 300 participants at a time. Scenarios included station fires, train failures in tunnels, derailments, onboard medical incidents and complex evacuations across multiple stations.
Participants were often given little or no advance detail, allowing real-time responses to smoke-filled carriages, simulated injuries, low lighting andcrowd movement to be observed and assessed.
Volunteer passengers reflected the diversity of Auckland’s daily commuters including older people, those with health conditions, people with limited English, and those with hearing, visual or mobility needs, ensuring the system works safely for everyone. More than 75 actors were also used to simulate situations that couldn’t otherwise be replicated.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand has continued to carry out site visits and additional training in the weeks leading up to opening.
“People may have seen our fire trucks parked outside the stations at all hours of the day,” says region manager Ron Devlin.
“There’s no need for concern, we’re simply giving as many crews as possible the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the new environment. Any of our crews across Tãmaki Makaurau may be called on to respond during an emergency.”
