Hundreds of police officers undertook a three-day course on how to deal with powerful earthquakes even though Britain has never experienced any such event.

useless pigs lol

Well we get lots of small earthquakes, but this is a monumental waste of money.

Because obviously the training is only useful should there be a powerful earthquake...

We don't often get tornadoes, but they happen occasionally. I don't see much wrong in preparing for the worst.

We get more than the USA - it's just that they're not usually very powerful.

I've seen a few myself.

These sorts of events are not worth training for.

We have not had any quake approaching 4 for years. I was in Birmingham when the 3.4 hit. Never even noticed it.

Quakes happen here but they are minor and we are a long way from any plate boundary. The worst that will happen is the odd cracked building and falling masonry. That could be caused by a storm. Now floods are something that could happen especially with all the building on flood plains, that is worth training for and even equipping forces with inflatables for emergency use.

of course this training could be useful if there is a castastrophic building collapse, also these officers may be sent out to other countries as part of a relief operation.

That is a much better reason, but that really is a role for firemen, and ambulance crews.