EMERGENCY services and volunteers will take part in a hill search and rescue exercise near the Mountain Road on Sunday.

Operation Theseus starts at 10am around the Windy Corner area of the A18.

The scenario involves a search for people believed to be injured and missing from a vehicle involved in a road traffic collision.

The exercise, co-ordinated by the police search advisor PC Kevin Williams, will involve between 60 and 70 people from the police, fire and rescue service, coastguard, civil defence and the search and rescue dogs (SARDA).

It will end around 3pm.

Operational areas being tested during Sunday’s exercise will include:

• Multi-agency radio communication protocols and incident logging
• Searching for property in addition to the missing person (clue finding)
• Extrapolation of evidential GPS data.

Emergency planning officer Martin Blackburn said: "The emergency services are regularly called on to work together and the added dimension of carrying out a search in a remote area some distance from the road provides a realistic test for training that has been going on throughout the summer."