The UK today staged a tower block collapse onto a mock Underground station as part of Europe's largest simulated training exercise involving hundreds of emergency services staff to test its contingency planning.

"Exercise Unified Response," coordinated by the London Fire Brigade, simulated a tower block collapsing into Waterloo station to prepare specialist emergency crews for a largescale operation with mass casualties.

The four-day exercise which started today is designed to test the contingency planning of more than 70 organisations including local councils, utility companies and specialist search and rescue teams alongside disaster victim identification teams from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Italy and Spain.

Chief Constable Debbie Simpson, National Police Chiefs' Council lead for Disaster Victim Identification in the UK, said: "When disaster strikes families need to be confident that the authorities are doing everything they can to identify their loved ones in a dignified and respectful way, whilst supporting any criminal investigation.

"It's not often we get to test working practices on such a scale and it's really positive to see so many of our European colleagues involved."



A total of 2,000 volunteers and actors will act as the casualties over four days and four separate venues in London as well as a disused power station are being used for the exercise.

The drill, staged mainly at Littlebrook Power Station, near Dartford in southeast England, will cost 770,000 pounds, funded by the European Union.

A mock-up Tube station has been created and seven carriages upturned in the rubble.