How to prepare for tunnel incidents without a tunnel

How to prepare for tunnel incidents without a tunnel

Safety Region Hollands Midden was tasked with ensuring the safety in and around the tunnel and prepare their staff for tunnel incidents. A crucial prerequisite for the tunnel to open was that the involved Safety Regions and other involved services, such as the Department of Waterways and Public Works (DWPW), must be properly trained in emergency response to incidents in the tunnel. But how do you prepare for incidents in a tunnel that has yet to be built? And how do you keep your staff effectively trained in tunnel incident management without having to shut down (parts of) the tunnel every year? As long-time users of XVR Simulation software, the answer was obvious to Safety Region Hollands Midden (Veiligheidsregio Hollands Midden, VRHM). XVR was commissioned by VRHM  to build the tunnel environment in 3D for simulation training purposes, allowing emergency services staff to prepare before the 2.5 km long tunnel officially opened.

XVR Simulation created a 3D environment based on blueprints provided by the tunnel planners that is true to the tunnel’s actual appearance, size and length, and with all fire hose connection points, cameras, emergency exits, maintenance rooms and other important objects in their accurate position. The route from the closest fire station is also included in the modelling to be able to train the drive-up as well. This allows emergency responders to train a vast range of scenarios, such as traffic collisions, collapses, fires, etc. that will not be possible to train in real life once the tunnel opens. Virtual training will also be an essential part of the training toolkit going forward, as it will be too costly in both time and resources to section off parts of the tunnel for live exercises.

Bert ’t Hart, from DWPW, says: “In XVR, our responders practice incidents in the tunnel virtually. This involves different scenarios, such as fire, collisions or even a full tunnel evacuation. Some of it is general and can be applied to other tunnels that we manage. But there are also scenarios that focus specifically on the Corbulo Tunnel, for which we train about 70 traffic controllers and 125 road inspectors. They also make regular orientation visits to the tunnel to familiarise themselves with the location.”

Inge Goossens, RijnlandRoute Program Manager at VRHM, is also excited about this addition to their training toolkit. “With this tool, we’ll always have access to the tunnels because we can access it virtually,” she says. “My expectation is that we will perform even better and safer, and that we’ll be better prepared for an incident in the tunnel, that we’ll know what we can expect from one another.”

VRHM has developed a training guide containing possible incident scenarios that emergency responders could face in the tunnel, such as RTA and CRBN incidents. Over the past months and years, they have performed several virtual multi-agency exercises to train and prepare crisis communication strategies and resource allocation.

All staff involved in the project, from firefighters to incident commanders and workers from the DWPW, have completed various eLearning and training programmes tailored to their specific roles. Altogether, about 1000 employees have been trained in this manner. Rogier van Voorden, XVR trainer and Senior Crisis Management Advisor for VRHM, is confident that they are prepared for all eventualities. On the 23rd of May of this year, they organised a successful, large-scale live exercise with several car wrecks, smoke and fire, and using actors to play casualties in various states of distress. 

After the opening, the virtual environment (which has been made available by VRHM to all XVR users in the world) will help the safety region to keep competency levels up for tunnel incident management without the need for the tunnel to shut down. 

Before the official opening of the tunnel on the 5th of July, the two-day RijnlandRoute Festival took place with more than 6500 visitors. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run, bike or walk through the tunnel raised almost €129.000 for the Youth Sports & Culture Fund, which allows children from low-income families to afford tuition or membership fees for e.g. football kit, guitar or dance lessons. And representatives from the ambulance and fire services delighted both young and old with demonstrations of their rescue skills.

Do you have a specific environment that you would like recreated in XVR On Scene? Get in touch with us at info@xvrsim.com to talk about the possibilities. Visit our community website for more insights, scenarios from other users, and more information.