A huge tent and a large number of emergency vehicles caught the eye of locals near Alexandra’s Pioneer Park yesterday (Thursday December 15), but luckily there was no emergency. 

Emergency Management Otago (EMO) was testing out new equipment, and 14 staff from the organisation, including two representatives from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) head office, were part of the exercise.

EMO group manager Matt Alley said the tent would be “an incident control room” in case of an emergency - which could be a flood, earthquake or any other major incident that might involve Civil Defence.

A large tent appeared in Pioneer Park on Thursday afternoon

“They can be used as headquarters from which to deploy and coordinate an on-the-ground response,” Matt said.

The large Covertex shelters have never been used before and were set up to see how they worked and what outfitting might be needed.

Matt said he was pleased the rain stayed away for the exercise as it would have been no fun packing up the large structure in the rain and putting it away wet. 

Emergency Management Otago has recently acquired two of the shelters, which are designed to deploy rapidly and withstand high winds.

One of the tents will be based in Alexandra to service the Central region, including Queenstown. The other will be kept in Dunedin to service the coastal part of Otago.