THE nerve agent poisoning was the longest running major incident in the UK and saw a "phenomenal" response from staff at Salisbury District Hospital.

Andy Hyett, the chief operating officer (COO) at Salisbury District Hospital, has been speaking to the Journal a year on from the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

Mr Hyett's role is to co-ordinate the hospital's technical response during major incidents.

He said: "We had come off a period of very intense activity [with the Beast from the East] and long hours and then straight into a significant major incident.

"It certainly wakes you up when you get that phone call at 5.50 in the morning. I will never get over that phone call.

"It is pretty unique."

He said: "The first phone calls started coming in about 5.50 in the morning where it started to become clear there had been events in Salisbury on the Sunday.

"What we couldn't do at that point was spread ourselves around the organisation because we didn't know what we were dealing with." The incident was later declared as a major incident by the hospital and Mr Hyatt says "by 10 o'clock it was a multi-agency major incident".

"Every COO in the country has the role of being lead for emergency planning and also takes on the responsibility of being the tactical commander for the hospital in a major incident. The difference here is very few people have actually done it and done it for this length of time. This still is the longest running major incident," added Mr Hyett.

"What often happens with major incidents is that you know what you are dealing with quite early on whether it is a car crash or an explosion or a number of other things your first brief will be you have this many casualties and this is their category from the point of view of the severity of their injuries.

"What was very unique with this incident was the number of people presenting to the hospital continued for for many weeks albeit, thankfully, nobody had been intoxicated but actually continued to present.

"What was important to us is we needed to get control of what was happening at the hospital and an understanding of what we were dealing with and be able to manage the incident and the running of the hospital."

He praised hospital staff for ensuring the day-to-day operation of the hospital was maintained during the major incident.

Mr Hyett said: "We successfully managed the hospital response to the longest running major incident and on top of that the hospital never closed. That was really important to us. We never even shut the emergency department. That was really important, we are a local hospital and the people are dependant on the services. For me we needed to continue to provide services and at the same time running a major incident."

"For me it is a methodical process managing a major incident and so what agent it was doesn't change the way you manage the incident," he said. "Whatever it is you need to co-ordinate the teams and response and pull it all together. From an operation point of view when we were told it was Novichok it didn't really change."

He said the team came together "phenomenally" and at "great speed" to co-ordinate the number of people who were involved, adding: "There was obviously a lot of people who presented to the hospital who were concerned and patients are treated in exactly the same way until it is proved that it is not the case that they have been infected."

Hospital staff have been passing on their experience of dealing with this major incident both nationally and internationally.