Stat of the day: £826,000

It may seem a lot - particularly when only 11 people have died in earthquakes in Britain over the past 1,000 years - but officials didn't let that put them off when it came to planning the training exercise, which included hundreds of actors (many of whom were amputees covered in fake blood - just to make things more authentic), and teams from Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United Arab Emirates. One Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service official said an event as unlikely as an earthquake was chosen 'because the UK is not accustomed to such incidents and is therefore outside all normal planning assumptions'. Hmm.