Coast Guard holds exercise

In a bid to check their preparedness for search and rescue (SAR) training at sea, Indian Coast Guard (ICG) on Tuesday organised a SAR workshop and exercise at Mumbai.

The morning saw a dummy aircraft with 169 dummy passengers being put in the sea at almost 13 nautical miles from Mumbai. It was later crashed into the sea with ICG officials evacuating the dummy passengers and finding debris and the aircraft’s black box. “Rescued” passengers were taken to centres established under BMC at Mahalaxmi race course, Port Trust, Girgaon Chowpatty and Naval Hospital INHS Ashvini.

Recalling the exercise, an ICG official told The Asian Age, “We assumed it to be an aircraft of Indo Airline bound for Singapore from Mumbai. Later, Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre Mumbai (MRCC) received a distress call from Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower of Mumbai airport that the aircraft was going to crash after which vessels were sent to the area for rescue. Simultaneously, real-time satellite-based distress communication mechanisms such as Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) from the aircraft were activated so as to check the efficacy of distress alert relay mechanisms. After receipt of distress message, SAR operations simulating ‘Mass Rescue’ were carried out 45km away from Mumbai.”

A second exercise had Coast Guard vessels douse fire on a dummy vessel at sea. As many as eight ICG ships, a Dornier aircraft, three Chetak helicopters, one advanced light helicopter, and one ship of the Shipping Corporation of India participated in the exercise. Overall, nearly 500 people from ICG participated.

The National Maritime Search and Rescue Board and resource agencies including Airline Operator Committee, Mumbai International Airport Limited, Air India, Airport Authority of India, Indian Mission Control Centre, Bangalore, Maharashtra state administration, BMC, Maharashtra Police, JNPT and MbPT participated in the ICG exercise. Twenty-five international observers from nine Australia, Bangladesh, Japan, Maldives, Mauritius, Myanmar, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, and United Arab Emirates witnessed the exercise.

Meanwhile, an AAI official said that such exercises boosted confidence of security agencies.