London emergency staff respond to Tube station disaster drill

Emergency crews in Kent took part in a graphic mock-up of the aftermath of a building’s collapse into a Tube station. They were testing their response to mass casualties.

Blood-covered ‘victims’, fake dead bodies, and actors with ‘sliced limbs’ and ‘open wounds’ were part of the biggest disaster-training exercise ever seen in Europe.

The scenario, at a disused power plant, near the Dartford river-crossing in Kent, involved a mocked-up Waterloo Tube station being ‘crushed’ by thousands of tonnes of rubble.