{"id":572137,"date":"2026-03-29T13:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T13:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/572137\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T13:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T13:35:14","slug":"adelaide-deployment-exercise-tests-emergency-services-with-details-drawn-from-recent-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/572137\/","title":{"rendered":"Adelaide ‘deployment exercise’ tests emergency services with details drawn from recent events"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Australian emergency services have conducted their largest mass casualty exercise in history in a bid to test coordination between agencies.<\/p>\n

SA Police Deputy Commissioner Linda Williams said the “deployment exercise” held at the Adelaide Convention Centre and the area in front of it on North Terrace included details drawn from recent events, without naming the Bondi massacre in particular.<\/p>\n

“The exercises are always adaptive to what’s been happening around not only Australia but around the world, so, yes, there have been nuances that have been learnt from live events and it’s really important for us to simulate that as much as possible into the exercise today,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A robot from SA Police’s bomb squad detonates a device during the exercise. (Supplied: Russell Millard\/The Advertiser)<\/p>\n

Larger than 2008 event<\/p>\n

The exercise involved about 300 first responders from SA Police, the SA Ambulance Service (SAAS), the Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) and SA Health, as well as volunteer actors.<\/p>\n

The training exercise started with a simulated car crash, then an explosion on North Terrace.<\/p>\n

Later, it involved an active armed offender, hostages, casualties, intelligence-gathering and negotiation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Police<\/p>\n

The exercise included officers from a range of SA Police branches, including forensics. (Supplied: Russell Millard\/The Advertiser)<\/p>\n

Deputy Commissioner Williams said it was larger than a similar exercise in South Australia in 2008<\/a>, when the scenario was an explosion at Football Park, which has since been demolished.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We will be looking very carefully at the debrief and the lessons learnt and, as the exercise was funded by the Australia-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee, we will be taking that back nationally as well to other law enforcement and first responders in terms of the lessons learnt as well,” she said.<\/p>\n

Coordination hailed<\/p>\n

MFS chief officer Jeff Swann said it was “really quite outstanding” to be able to collaborate with other agencies.<\/p>\n

“I couldn’t be more proud of our firefighters,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The way they conducted themselves and the skills that they used to go back to their core of protecting life, property and the environment was really outstanding, so I’m very happy.”<\/p>\n

\"Emergency<\/p>\n

First responders work together to treat patients during the exercise. (Supplied: Russell Millard\/The Advertiser)<\/p>\n

SAAS chief executive Rob Elliott agreed working together was “incredibly important”.<\/p>\n

“We look forward to the lessons learnt,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Even though we feel very confident the way today was handled, there’s always those opportunities to improve and that’s what today is about \u2014 walking away and seeing how we can work together better for South Australia.”<\/p>\n

Traffic and buses were disrupted on North Terrace during the operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Australian emergency services have conducted their largest mass casualty exercise in history in a bid to test…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[280788,280790,6093,638,64,63,280789,36506,280792,44,280791,6082,51905,36565,6857],"class_list":["post-572137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-adelaide-convention-centre","tag-adelaide-high-school","tag-adelaide-oval","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-deployment-exercise","tag-emergency","tag-intercontintental","tag-news","tag-north-terrace","tag-port-adelaide","tag-terror","tag-tram","tag-west-coast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}