Firefighters Prepare For Olympics

24 August 2011, 10:59 | Updated: 24 August 2011, 15:41

Firefighters are preparing for the Olympics today by practising emergency situations at Lea Valley Park.

It's so they can familiarise themselves with the park and practice their water rescue skills.

The scenarios include saving someone who's fallen into the canal, the rescue of athletes stuck under a boat and the search of a body.

The 5 day canoe slalom event will be held at the brand new venue in Hertfordshire next year attracting around 12,000 spectators a day.

Steve Tant, who's in charge of the Olympic planning for Herts Fire and Rescue, says ''That amount of people in close proximity to water is one of the reasons why we're training for water rescue that's not to say that it's likely to happen it's still highly unlikely. We're making sure it's a safe and secure games.

We make them as realistic as we possibly can, obviously we don't involve live casualties as far as reasonably possible. If we have to have anybody live to rescue they will be a trained fire fighter as well but as near as we can possibly make it to realism we do.''