A group of St John Ambulance volunteers were been put through their paces during a mass casualty simulation at the Tauranga Racecourse.

Involving members of the New Zealand Fire Service, the exercise saw the ten volunteers from Tauranga, Te Puke, Rotorua, Murupara, Gisborne and Mangakino triage and treat a group of actors suffering a range of simulated injuries caused as a result of a massive explosion.

'The premise of the simulation was a group of people got together to make illegal fireworks or illegal explosives but it's all gone terribly wrong and there's a massive explosion,” says St John clinical support officer Nicole Spargo.

'So we used a smoke machine to replicate the conditions they would face, and some of the injuries we simulated included a bowel evisceration, someone being impaled by a piece of metal, and people suffering asthma attacks, chest pain, minor grazes, and burns.”

Wednesday's exercise was delivered as part of St John's National Diploma in Ambulance Practice which the ten volunteers have all been undertaking for the past three months.

St John's runs two diploma classes in Tauranga each year and previous simulations include an explosion on a fishing trawler, an explosion at a metal scrapyard, plus multiple vehicle car accidents.

Nicole says this latest crop of diploma students all come from a wide range of backgrounds, and because they're volunteers, the work they do for St John is in on top of their regular lives.

'They're all making a valuable contribution to their communities, especially for the likes of the people from Murupara and Mangakino where there's not many volunteers or ambulance staff.

'On the flipside, some of the volunteers who work out of metropolitan stations, like Mount Maunganui and Gisborne, assist and support our frontline ambulance staff and are a major part of our workforce.”

Fellow St John clinical support officer Adam Rayner says Wednesday's simulation ran perfectly and was an amazing learning opportunity for the volunteers.

'The trainees all learned a hell of a lot during the exercise, they were all given an opportunity to practice St John's major incident procedure which will be very beneficial for them.”

'I want to thank all the actors who were involved in the exercise and also give a huge thank you to the Tauranga Equestrian Show Jumping Association who provided us the venue for the simulation.”