Wiltshire firefighters, police and the ambulance service have been testing themselves for an emergency that they hope will never happen.

As part of regular training to assess operational response to largescale emergencies an exercise was held on Ministry of Defence property at Lyneham.

Fire crews from Avon and Gloucestershire also took part, as did Wiltshire police, South Western Ambulance Service and MOD Lyneham personnel.

Forty volunteers, including students from New College Swindon, went along as role players, and the Rapid Relief Team UK attended to provide refreshments.

A Wiltshire fire service spokesman said: “Although MOD Lyneham was the venue, the scenario was not based on a military location.

"Instead, it was based on a civil disorder where fires were set and a chemical leak occurred, requiring mass evacuation and decontamination.”

Station Manager Dean Hoskins, who ran the exercise, said: “These training days are scheduled months in advance and involve a huge amount of preparation, and we tend to focus on the extreme kinds of incident that we thankfully don’t tend to deal with on a daily basis.”

He added: “Should something happen within our service area that requires mass decontamination – and that could be an industrial accident through to deliberate action – we need to know how to respond, from our control room receiving the initial 999 call to crews working with ambulance, police and other specialist colleagues on the ground.”