MOSCOW. June 17 (Interfax-AVN) - The Kaliningrad-2004 international rescuer exercise will be held in the Baltic Sea and on the sea coast near the Khmelyovska training ground June 22-25.
"The Kaliningrad-2004 exercise will be held to manage a simulated emergency situation caused by fire and oil spills at the Vyshka-1 oil platform in the Ts-8 oil field of the Baltic Sea," Colonel Viktor Beltsov, head of the Russian Emergencies Ministry's press service, told Interfax-Military News Agency Thursday.
The exercise will involve over 1,000 rescuers from Russia and 22 other countries, he stressed.
The exercise will be supervised by Colonel General Gennady Korotkin, Deputy Emergencies Minister of Russia, with Carsten Fausboll, Acting Director Civil Emergency Planning, NATO, as his deputy.
The Russian side will be represented by teams of the Tsentrospas Central State Airmobile Rescue Team, the 294th Lider center for hazardous rescue operations, the GOSAKVASPAS organization, the Emergencies Ministry aviation, the territorial subsystem of the United Emergency Situation Warning and Liquidation System of the Kaliningrad region, including the Kaliningrad offshoot of the Baltic Basin Emergency Rescue Directorate of the Russian Transportation Ministry, specialists of the Center for Emergency Rescue and Ecological Operations, LUKOIL-Kaliningradmorneft, Transzas, as well as ships and ground units of the Baltic Fleet.
Besides, rescue teams from Poland and Lithuania will participate. "Lithuania, in particular, will send a 12-man-strong fire-fighting team of the national fire-fighting and rescue service and regional rescue service of Klaipeda, which specialize in collecting oil products that pollute the environment and conducting rescue operations in local emergencies," Beltsov said.
According to him, the practical part of the exercise will be organized in three stages. First comes the preparative one from June 18 to 23, when the participants will work through the issues of command, control and liaison of the Russian Emergencies Ministry's assets and other partners; warn neighboring countries, NATO and the UN of the nature and the scales of the terrorist attack; ask foreign countries via NATO and the UN for assistance in managing the emergency situation.
At the second and third stages, to last from June 22 to 23, they will elaborate a plan of the international operation in the Baltic Sea and then practice joint actions with Lithuanian and Polish rescuers at the Khmelyovka range.
This will be followed by a command post exercise aimed at refining crisis management and international cooperation in emergency situations on the ground and in the sea resulting from a terrorist attack. The CPX is scheduled for June 24-25.
The Russian Emergencies Ministry's KA-32 Helix and MI-8 Hip helicopters will be employed to suppress fire at the Vyshka-1 platform of the Ts-8 oil field. They will have specially designed water-discharging devices. In addition, a fire-fighting boat will be used, and the Be-200ChS amphibian will demonstrate its capabilities for the first time, dropping water to the focus of fire. Moreover, a rescuer party will be airdropped on water and the oil platform, Beltsov said.
He noted that results of the Kaliningrad-2004 exercise will be summed up and the event will be closed on June 25.