Streamline Training & Documentation: Training for Lifeboat Crews

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Training for Lifeboat Crews

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution has been saving lives in the waters around the UK and the Republic of Ireland since 1824. Volunteer lifeboat crews perform search and rescue, and, in the UK, volunteer lifeguards stand duty on beaches.

The RNLI operates a training center called Lifeboat College in Poole, on the south central coast of England. The Lifeboat College includes a survival center, among whose facilities is a bridge simulator, which crew trainees use to practice sea search and rescue skills. The RNLI website explains:

Exercise scenarios require crew to coordinate activities with other rescue authorities and rescue craft in an assessment situation, under pressure. Simulator exercises average 90 minutes, involving scenarios such as man overboard, missing craft, sinkings or groundings. All training within the simulator is styled on recent, real life situations around the UK and Republic of Ireland coast.

You can see the simulator in action in the video below.

The survival center also has a wave pool, in which students taking a combined first aid, sea survival and firefighting course can practice in conditions of darkness, simulated storms, and simulated helicoptor recovery. The pool is also used for the capsize training element of inshore lifeboat courses.

Other facilities in the survival center are an engine fire simulator, used for training in fire prevention, fire fighting, and maintaining teamwork in emergency situations, and an engineering workshop, in which lifeboat mechanics hone technical skills, including repair and maintenance of a variety of engines used in RNLI lifeboats.

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Labels: Simulation

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