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Author: mtthwhgn

Emergency Planning – why bother?

Emergency Planning – why bother?

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I never forget the reason for my personal passion in emergency preparedness. However, like all of us, I have the occasional fleeting moment when my inner cynic rises a little closer to the surface, and all I have to do is cast my mind back…

Conceptualised as The Decade of Disaster, there was a period in the late 80’s/early 90s when sadly there were a series of emergencies within a short space of time. The majority of these were transport, sport or industrial process related. I remember sitting in presentation after presentation being reminded of these horrific incidents.

However, what I’ve come to realise is that no matter where you draw the line, you’re always able to find evidence of a ‘Decade of Disaster’. There are some statistics which suggest that disaster risk is increasing. I have no doubt that, on an international scale this is indeed the case. As the world’s population both increases and agglomerates, phenomena will have greater impact on people; and it’s probably a given that man-made disasters, with increased reliance on technology and no end in sight to economic inequalities, are also here to stay.

So, what does this mean? Why am I blogging about it? Well, the compilation of news clips above comes courtesy of the Emergency Planning College and just goes to show that we can’t stop emergencies. They will continue, and sadly, in another few years we’ll be able to pull together clips from a different decade. However, each of us, whether as individuals, members of local communities, emplopyees or employers can take action to reduce the level of impact that emergencies can have.

We have a choice, either take action, or accept that one day, it could be us in the video clips.

Complexity & Interdependency

Complexity & Interdependency

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tt19-Interdependency

I’m currently working on a project investigating Infrastructure Ecology, although that’s not how I describe it at work for fear of alienating the audience! It’s a fascinating area of enquiry, which the diagram above only partially articulates and I’d need more than one blog post to do it justice. So I thought I’d start with why I think it’s fascinating.

When we flick on a light switch, twist a tap or pick up our phone we expect those services to work. We’ve come to rely on them, and largely that doesn’t cause us any issues – the lights come on, water comes of ouf the tap and we hear a dial tone. However, incidents (Gloucestershire flooding 2007 and Hurricane Sandy 2012 to name just two examples) and exercises that I have either participated in or facilitated consistently reveal that these systems are far from 100% reliable.

Too often we treat things in silos, but increasingly we need to consider how the different systems that we have developed and have evolved alongside over many years interact and depend on each other. In a previous role, I facilitated a business continuity exercise for a large teaching hospital. The scenario was pretty basic, but it revealed that all but 4 of the wards in the hospital had planned to use the same fallback space – in the worst case this meant cramming over 200 patients into a 30 bed ward. We find it difficult to think outside of our sphere; I’m not sure of the reasons why, but we need to recognise that it happens and develop a methodology which forces us to think more holistically.

Interdisciplinary approaches are the way forward. Involving a wider range of people and organisations is risky – and makes camels a more likely outcome – but it’s the only solution to get us out of our silos.

Previous attempts to ‘educate’ professionals about these business continuity challenges concentrated on presentations, and as the same lessons are still coming us, I think we can be confident that levels of awareness have remained largely static. My approach has been to redefine the problem (that non-experts don’t understand interdependencies and complexities of systems) and to look for other world solutions (which is where the ‘ecology’ in Infrastructure Ecology comes in).

Experts in biodiversity have known for a considerable length of time that the key to understanding the key to successful interventions is understanding the underpinning relationships between predator-prey-environment. It’s something that I vaguely remembered learning at school, and without much thought it was clear that it was a model which had applications in helping understand the infrastructure problems encountered.

Last week I ran two workshops at City Hall, with representation from a wide variety of sectors organisations and interests to harvest their experience and knowledge. This will be synthesised to produce a model of an urban area which ‘understands’ how the different systems are related and therefore what the consequences of interruption to one will be on other systems.

I’m now in the process of translating the data we collected into something meaningful. I have some grand aspirations for the project, and alternative between getting carried away and reigning myself in to concentrate on the practical! I’ll keep you posted!

Image Source: NARUC

Response – The Great European Stink

Response – The Great European Stink

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Now, this blog post is a bit delayed, more than a bit actually, nearly a month! But as well as my occasional musings on resilience and emergency planning, this blog is also a mechanism to capture the incidents that I’ve been involved with.

Just a week after the Helicopter crash, our team was called into action again, for a chemical release in Rouen, northern France.

Now, there are thousands of chemicals out there, probably more than that, so I’m not going to claim to know the response precautions for every one, however, thanks to some research I did following this episode of TV’s F.R.I.E.N.D.S, I did have a basic knowledge of Mercaptan! The smell that they add to odourless natural gas as a safety measure to identify leaks.

A quick call to expert colleagues in the Health Protection Agency (or Public Health England depending on when you’re reading this) confirmed my suspicions. Mercaptan is detectable by the human nose at around 0.27-0.93 parts per billion, whereas exposure limits are around 0.5 parts per million, and given the gas has diluted considerably as it crossed the Channel, no health concerns were likely; and the work for our team was relatively short-lived.

Meanwhile, in Norway, another incident was creating fumes of a different kind, as 27 tonnes of goats cheese caught fire!

These incidents gave me the impetus I needed to start a personal project to gather information on these ‘low end of the scale’ incidents. I believe that perfecting the response to smaller incidents will make responding to larger incidents more habitual.

ZombieLab

ZombieLab

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I realise that it’s been a few days since posting, that’s largely due to some exciting developments behind there scenes here at mtthwhgn.com towers. I’m not revealing anything just yet, but it’ll be worth it so keep checking back; until then, normal service will continue, this time with Zombies…

zombielab

Last week I went to Science Museum Lates for an adults-only event called ZombieLab: The science of consciousness. Combining my love of learning, my interest in the undead and my appreciation for wine, this seemed like a great way to spend an evening.

Zombies are nothing new, and once I get round to watching some disaster movies, there will be a fair few which are centered around them. However, there has been a rise, in recent years, of zombies being used by Emergency Planners to bring pop-culture relevance to the work we do. I first noticed this a few years ago with CDC’s Zombie Webpages, and Leicester City Council’s admission of unpreparedness. Whilst an outbreak of flesh-eating zombies might be highly unlikely, preparing for such an apocalypse has more than a few parallels to preparing to real emergencies too.

It was this in mind that I went to ZombieLab. Roaming throughout the museum were ‘infected specimens’ and ‘operatives’ who would check the crowd for signs of infection using a range of tests designed to filter out the undead, including

  • Memory
  • Hand-Eye Coordination
  • Stability
  • Accuracy
  • Pattern Recognition
  • Spatial Awareness

Granted, these didn’t have much to do with repairing for emergencies, however, during the course of the evening, members of the crowd were ‘bitten’ and became zombies themselves.

Now, I’d have liked there to have been more on the science of how disease, even unlikely ones, are spread. We’ve already seen examples of how air travel has speeded up the global transmission of diseases such as SARS, and many other bugs are on the horizon.

Emergency Managers (in the UK at least) use the Reasonable Worst Case to develop planning assumptions and conduct risk assessments. Whilst the Swine Flu Pandemic in 2009/10 didn’t reach these planned levels, there was potential, which still remains, for a novel virus to have a massive impact not just locally, but on global populations.

Whether we choose to prepare (or encourage people to prepare) for flooding, flu or flesh-eating zombies is irrelevant. What matters is that they’re preparing. How long we can ride the zombie wave isn’t known (judging by the numbers at the Science Museum last week there’s still a considerable interest), but there will be something else. Something which will captivate popular imagination despite being implausible.

 

Image Source: Science Museum Flickr ZombieLab Set

Rainy Day Funds

Rainy Day Funds

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Ceramic piggy bank

I read an article in The Independent last week about how there has been an increase in people unable to cope with unexpected expenditure.

Presumably this is as a result of the recession, and I’ve certainly noticed that everyday life seems to be that little bit more expensive than it used to be; most likely as a result of a combination of rising fuel prices, an increase in VAT and inflation rate changes. However, I’m no economist and therefore I’ll leave precise analysis of the reasons for this to people much better informed than me.

This does have impacts for resilience though. Flooding, arguably the UK’s most likely risk, rarely generates sensational media images associated with…say…helicopter crashes, but (I would suggest) is more damaging in terms of cost. In this context, Rainy Day Fund seems a particularly apt metaphor.

Right now, would you be able to afford, or does your insurance cover,

  • Replacing all of your downstairs carpets?
  • Hiring equipment to dry out plaster?
  • Repairing damage to your car caused by flood water and debris?

It’s something The Guardian picked up in 2011, but clearly many of us didn’t heed their warnings! How many of us have a piggy bank that we can raid in an emergency?

I have several contingency funds, but none of them particularly extensive, and I’m sure I’d have to call on other sources of assistance if I needed large sums of money quickly.

The organisations that I work with every day prepare detailed plans for many of the risks in the National Risk Register. Some of them have considered how to ‘deal’ with Vulnerable People, and often this involves information to “prepare a household or community emergency plan” but perhaps some more practical advice like “save a small amount of money each week” would be more advantageous?

Community resilience isn’t just about sandbags!

 

Image Source: Ocean/Corbis

Response – Vauxhall Helicopter Crash

Response – Vauxhall Helicopter Crash

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It’s been a busy 48 hours!

One of the earliest photos that I saw (Via @craiglet)

Shortly after 0800 on 16 January I was made aware of an aircraft which had crashed in central London. Fortunately I wasn’t on call, so didn’t have any immediate responsibilities, and therefore decided that I would remain at home to watch the unfolding news. This ensured that rather than getting on the tube, I remained contactable should I have been needed.

It quickly became apparent, in the age of social media and citizen journalists (which is a dated term, but I quite like it) that the aircraft in question was a helicopter, which had collided with a crane on a construction site.

Having established these very basic facts, and having received no calls at this point, I decided that I should probably go to work!

As I arrived, it became apparent that this tragic incident had really grasped the attention of the media, which, as ever was a sea of speculation with islands of truth. For me it’s not a problem, because I’ve been trained to treat media reports with a degree of caution until confirmed. It’s not surprising though, when many members of the public (with limited other information) believe everything they see in the news.

At the scene of the incident, and even away from the scene, response arrangements were initiated. However, the response to any emergency involves many more organisations than you typically might expect. Just as an example, each of the locations in the following sentence fall under the jurisdiction of a different organisation. The helicopter had hit a building site, debris had fallen into a variety of areas, which could have included a very busy stretch of railway, a considerable area of the road network in the area and various business premises and homes.

Providing support, consistent and accurate information and a communication route between the many and varied agencies is my primary role in a situation such as this. The initial phase of an incident, the first few hours generally, are (quite rightly) dominated by the emergency services. As time progresses through, colleagues from Local Authorities, Transport providers, Government and Utility companies all have a role to play in the response, recovery and communication to the public.

Whilst the investigation into this incident is ongoing it wouldn’t be right for me to comment any further than these basic details.

But before the snow arrives, and as the media reports move on to other issues, I felt it appropriate to acknowledge the very wide range of organisations who work together in these situations.

That, and it’s a perfect example of (what I call) the Emergency Planner’s Paradox. It is obviously a tragic incident and my sincere condolences are with the families of those who were sadly killed, but it is a real test of the planned arrangements, and I think they worked incredibly well in this instance.

Photo Source: @craiglet (I chose this one as it was the first that I saw yesterday)

Resilience at the movies

Resilience at the movies

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I didn’t realise it until I started this blog, but it appears that I have an affinity for the Disaster Movie.

I’ve developed this list of Disaster Movies and will be bringing you my thoughts on disaster films from a professional perspective (it’s based on a list I found here, and as you’ll see, it’s very much a work in progress!). I’m not setting myself any objectives here – I’ll just do this as and when, and based on which movies I can get my hands on. Check the ‘At the movies’ category for all relevant blog posts.

disaster movie picture

What am I hoping this will reveal? Well, there are already numerous studies of Disaster Movies from other perspectives (cinematography, feminism etc) – but as far as I’m aware, there hasn’t been a professional Emergency Management approach previously. So, my intention will be to compare what I know and have experience of, with what is portrayed on the big (or little) screen.

Obviously Hollywood likes to embellish fact with a good story; I understand that we’re not, unless explicitly stated, watching documentaries here. Nevertheless, for most of us (in the UK at least) our exposure to disasters is infrequent, so perhaps the disaster movie can serve as a learning experience – perhaps for the public, but perhaps also for the response community. Maybe once I’ve worked my way through the list I’ll have uncovered a lot more!

It’s going to take some time, and I expect I won’t be able to get through all of the films listed. I’ve already provided my analysis of 2012s The Impossible and I watched Source Code this weekend so will bring you that one soon too.

So there we have it, my intention for the first ‘running theme’ of this blog. If you have any suggestions on films you’d like reviewed – what was the professional message from Snakes on a Plane perhaps – then drop me a comment below or on twitter.

Oh, and the image is my rudimentary analysis of the categories of disaster film by year – I’m going to do a bit more work on this and come back with some more meaningful and insightful analysis, so for now, it’s just a nice picture!

mtthwhgn phone home…

mtthwhgn phone home…

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I doubt I’ll be alone in confessing that E.T. makes me cry. Especially that part where he’s getting frustrated that he can’t contact his family.

et-phone-home

Now, anthropomorphic aliens aside, I think there is a resilience message here. (Yes, I can pretty much get a resilience message from any TV or Film – feel free to challenge me!)

Imagine yourself in his situation, due to a turn of events, lets say a disaster; you’re unable to get in touch with your friends and relatives, or find out information via the internet or social media. This could happen for a variety of reasons – the sheer number of people trying to use the network could cause overloading, similar to the effect observed every year on New Years Eve.

It could also occur because your phone has been damaged or the battery runs flat as you’re using it. This is a particular problem for smartphone users as many of the apps suck battery life even in sleep mode, and research from Purdue University suggests that even “a fully charged phone battery can be drained in as little as five hours”.

Being a committed emergency planning professional, I practice what I preach and have a Zombie Apocalypse Bag ready and waiting. Two of the items in this bag are designed to enable me to charge my phone, so you’d think that would be enough. However, an article in the New York Times yesterday, summarising research from the Electric Power Research Institute, has made me question how effective these solutions would be – answer: not very.

  • From my solar charger – I’d need 6-8 hours of sunlight to charge a phone by 25%.
  • From the hand cranked charger with built in torch – I’d need to continually crank at a rate of 2 cranks per second for two and a half hours to get the same, 25%, level of charge.
  • I don’t have a car, but if I could use a cigarette lighter socket charger, then I have a reasonable chance of getting 25% charge within an hour – but it does present risks of draining the car battery and might need to be done in a ventilated area.
  • If I had a battery charger, I could get a 15% charge in 30 minutes, which sounds like a much more effective rate of charge – but would require me to invest in a supply of long-life AA batteries

This post was originally written for my work blog, where I posed a question to readers about what I could do to improve my own resilience. I’ll bring you a breakdown of the responses soon (because this site needs some graphs!).

But for now, how much do you rely on your phone? Have you considered what you’d do without it?

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/purplelime

The Impossible

The Impossible

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I’ve seen my fair share of disaster films, and the ones which resonate with me most, are those based on true stories. Last night I went to see The Impossible. I’d recommend that you go too…here’s the trailer.

Yes, Emmerich’s frozen New York is impressive, but lets face it, chances of Snowball Earth within a few days is pretty unlikely. Bayona’s tsunami however, well I remember that quite vividly.

Following the earthquake on Boxing Day 2004, I spent many of the subsequent days rapidly picking up German so that I could understand the TV reports (I was in Austria at the time). Similarly to 9/11, the scenes that were being shown looked like the work of Hollywood.

It wasn’t too long before some other breaking news slipped the tsunami down the agenda and out of mind of those not directly involved. However, as I watched the film yesterday Bayona did a great job at recreating the terror and posed some important questions about emergency preparedness (I wonder if he knew he was doing this?).

I don’t want to spoil the film for you, but difficult decisions abound

  • Do you think about risk before going on holiday? What preparations do you make?
  • Would you rescue the abandoned child or would you get yourself to safety? Could you separate yourself from your children to search for other family members?
  • What are your natural abilities, how could you use them to help the response effort?
  • How do you think you would cope without everyday luxuries? Language barriers?
  • Would you let other people use your mobile phone knowing that you can’t charge it when the battery runs out?
  • Do you operate on the patient with a limited chance of survival? How do you prioritise who gets scarce resources?

The rational part of me disagreed with some choices that the main characters made in response to these quandaries; but they weren’t wrong. Until we’re in that situation I think its impossible to predict what our response would be; and I think that’s the take away message.

Disaster films are not documentaries – they exaggerate reality and always have plot devices designed to elicit an emotive response. But the reason I love them, is that they continually ask “what would you do” and getting people to consider that is a great step forward.

Daring to learn lessons

Daring to learn lessons

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Lessons Learned

The public sector does lots of good for a great many people, but occasionally it doesn’t perform as well as it should. Sadly, it’s easy to recall examples of this. We increasingly live in a culture which doesn’t tolerate failure, so how is this Preppers applicable to emergency planning?

It’s a tricky semantic road to navigate, but a cause of personal frustration is that lessons are repeatedly ‘identified’ but less frequently are they ‘learned’.

I recently developed a database of lessons from exercises dating back to 2004. It’s a beast, but it was actually a really rewarding piece of work to undertake; helping identify common patterns and themes, which despite being identified over the course of multiple exercises, are yet to be resolved.

Communications is probably the prime example (ask any emergency planner!). Countless exercises and incidents have identified issues with communications, and yet despite all the investment in bespoke equipment and training, it still features in exercise and incident debriefs.

So why do some lessons remain unlearned? Are there bigger obstacles in the way? Are we aiming too high? Are there complex cognitive factors at play which stop us learning from history and experience?

I’m yet to read Seth Godin’s latest book, but having heard his comment that “nobody cares about all the hours you spent with the committee whittling your best work…cause a ruckus” I’ve added it to my wishlist.

The public, quite rightly, wouldn’t tolerate impaired emergency response where an exercise had previously highlighted issues, which hadn’t been subsequently acted upon. Even if that lesson had been debated and discussed at length in public sector boardrooms.

Perhaps Godin has the answer for addressing those lessons which fail to be learned? Maybe resilience practitioners need to be more daring, more imaginative; to overcome these hurdles and achieve the art of learning lessons.

In any case, my commute reading for January is sorted!

Image source: chadstutzman.com