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Floods test civil contingency communications
What a lovely summer!
Wet, wet, wet and I don’t mean the group that Marti Pellow was the lead singer in. Unfortunately, it is only our lovely summer weather that I am referring to.
This lovely weather not only brought chaos to our roads, but also tested the civil contingency communications systems. However; on reflection of the events of the last few weeks, including the disruption to the 999 service on Friday, it must be said that overall the systems held up well.
The question is; can we take forward any lessons learned at various local levels and implement them nationally?
This sounds pretty straightforward as I sit here writing this; achieving it may be more difficult. However, I think that we should make every effort to succeed.
Obviously the first step is to record accurately all actions taken during events such as happened last week, then identify a national forum to take forward lessons learned nationally and where possible provide a document that can be used at local level when such disruption to our services happens.
Considering a lot of our communications infrastructure is underground it was surprising how well it coped, but it would be useful if the companies that provide it would share with organisations and businesses the weaknesses that were identified last week so that resilience measures could be put in place for such events in the future.
Quite coincidentally the Steering Committee for this years’ BAPCO Road Show Programme are putting together an event that will use a flooding scenario to address the theme of inter service information and data sharing so may be that will be the vehicle to identify the methodology and means to achieve national debate and input.
The dates and venues for the Road Shows (for your diary!) are:
3rd October 2007- Edinburgh University
17th October 2007 -Yew Lodge Hotel, Kegworth (near East Midlands Airport)
31st October 2007 - Royal Berkshire Conference Centre, Reading
I do hope that the events and weather that we have experienced over the last few weeks do not continue for the rest of the summer especially now that the school holidays have started. I would be interested in information or thoughts that anyone has that could help prepare for any such weather in the future.
Ray Trotter
BAPCO President
