RESCUE volunteers will be in full-scale disaster mode next month for a major exercise in south Wiltshire.

Over the course of three days, they will face simulated flooding, building collapses, power outages and missing person scenarios as part of Exercise Resilient Endeavour.

These tasks will take place across 150 square kilometres of south Wiltshire.

Half a dozen different volunteer agencies, which offer public support in times of crisis such as severe weather events, will come together with emergency services partners from across the region to practice dealing with the realistic rescue situations.

The rehearsals are hugely important to make sure volunteers are ready for the real thing and working in a way that complements each other and the emergency services.

It’s also a great opportunity for new volunteers to get involved.

The exercise is being run by Serve On, the Salisbury-based humanitarian response charity which has only recently finished a major four-day exercise – FakeQuake19 – to confirm the operational readiness of its latest cohort of International Response Team (IRT) volunteers.

Serve On’s IRT volunteers will be joined by members of the charity’s Community Resilience Teams from Salisbury and Portsmouth, members of their Dog Search Team and by young people from their Rescue Rookies programme.

They will also be working with volunteers from Wiltshire Search and Rescue (WILSAR), Wessex 4x4, Support2Ops, Rapid Relief Team (RRT), South Wilts Raynet and Team Rubicon UK.

Exercise Resilient Endeavour will take place over the weekend November 29 to December 1.