People looked puzzled as a whole army of firemen, Enemalta officials and paramedics fought an imaginary fire at the March 31 Fuel Storage Facility in Birżebbuġa yesterday.

They were, in fact, taking part in a simulation exercise carried out by the Civil Protection Department, in collaboration with other departments, to prepare for an emergency should this arise.

The exercise simulated a leakage of light fuel that led to a fire, which left a small number of casualties.

CPD head Patrick Murgo explained that the exercise was aimed at testing and examining communications between entities and also to identify any gaps in the department's system. This included liaising with the police, Enemalta, the Armed Forces of Malta, Transport Malta, the Birżebbuġa local council and the Association of Scheduled Bus Services, that would have helped residents evacuate the area if such a calamity occurred.

The hypothetical situation was exacerbated when the pumping system at the Enemalta plant failed, meaning the firemen had to pump water from the sea into a fireboat, into a fire hydrant and into a fire engine.

Mr Murgo said the exercise was a success but not because everything had ran smoothly: "The point of the exercise was to find out how we reacted and coordinated our efforts should an emergency such as this occur. It is a success because we identified possible pitfalls and these will be addressed soon."

One of problems identified was the way in which traffic was controlled. Mr Murgo said the name of the plant could have easily been mistaken for a street having the same name. This will be addressed by the use of maps of zones.