Dozens of volunteers took part in a staged motorway pile-up in one of the biggest ever emergency services training exercises.
After months of planning, 'Exercise Dark Knight' was held on the M62 whilst it was closed for engineering works on Saturday night.
A smashed up coach was brought onto the stretch of the motorway near the junction with the M60 at Eccles, whilst work on the new SMART motorway were going on two junctions further down near Warrington meaning the carriageway was closed for 12 hours.
The smashed up old bus, minus its windows and fuel, was lowered onto its side with two lorries, eight cars and a motorbike all also brought in on a transporter as part of the 'multiple casualty incident.'
Around 80 volunteers, including 50 from a local amateur dramatics society, played the roles of the injured passengers.
Members of St Joseph’s Players in Leigh and the Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Service and Casualties Union were painted with fake blood and wounds to make it as realistic as possible.
They were then cut free by firefighters from both Greater Manchester and Cheshire and 'treated' at the scene by paramedics from the North West Ambulance Service.
Bosses said the exercise, one of the biggest of its kind ever carried out, was vital for helping them refresh and hone their skills for other similar major incidents which may occur in real life.
Chris Evans, Station Manager at Chadderton Fire station and the Exercise Director said “Last night’s exercise was the culmination of months of meticulous planning, all designed to ensure that should an incident of this type and scale occur on our motorway network - we can all respond as efficiently and as effectively as possible to provide the public with a first class service."
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“It’s not just the obvious ‘blue light’ services of the Police Fire and Ambulance Service involved in an emergency response to an incident such as this – it’s also the Highways Agency Traffic Officers and the recovery companies too who between us all play a specific role in safely managing an incident, helping to provide the best outcomes for any casualties and also to ensure that the motorway infrastructure can re-open as quickly as possible to reduce disruption to other road users."
The stretch of the M62 between the M6 and the M60 is used by around 120,000 vehicles every day.
Ahead of the exercise, Chris Chadwick, North West resilience co-ordinator at Highways England, said: "Our motorways are among the safest in the world and we help to keep them safe by carefully planning what we’d do on the rare occasions when there’s a major incident."
