By Jessica Rowe
The army's turning Christchurch’s red zone into a war zone for its urban training exercises.
Soldiers are utilising the quake-damaged buildings to sharpen their skills in close-quarter combat and urban warfare.
Seventy soldiers stormed a quake-damaged building in search of the "enemy", and for these exercises they had everything but real bullets and real blood.
Soldier Sam Miller says it is a good idea.
“This is a unique opportunity… The damage from the earthquake and some of the left-over rubble provides some of that simulation you actually have in a war zone.”
With guns blazing and grenades in hand, it's the second exercise they've carried out in Christchurch’s city red zone in a week.
Soldiers had to wear body armour weighing approximately 15kg, making the red zone training exercise even more challenging for soldiers.
Earlier this year, urban search and rescue trained their specialised dogs in the red zone, trying to locate people hidden in the rubble of the former Orion building.
And the police also used the residential red zone for a specialist police unit training exercise.
“[It was] good fun,” Private Thomas Conchie says. “Much more realistic than the containers we have back at camp. [It] provides more similar [conditions] to what it is like overseas.”
It was a successful attack that should prepare them for the real thing, in a real war zone.
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