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A climate for preparedness
The BAPCO Autumn Roadshows this year are concentrating on the practical technology required to implement the Civil Contingencies Act,particularly that required to deliver greater interoperability between many agencies at different levels of command.BAPCO has gone out of its way to ensure that a wide range of relevant parties have been invited to these events and I hope that the SAO’s hard work is rewarded with good attendance,exhibitions and presentations.
It strikes me that the world really is a changing place.Over the last few years we appear to have witnessed a rise in the number and scale of severe incidents to which the world’s emergency services have had to respond.There are many factors creating this impression; global warming,which seems to contribute to everything including
increasingly violent storms,famine and pestilence;unstable governments;civil wars;and,terrorism,all of which are compounded by the increasing sophistication of the media and the widespread personal ownership of technology capable of delivering immediate and highly visual images of disaster and distress to our sitting rooms.
Certainly it seems to me that I have had reason to mention various significant incidents over the past couple of years the latest of these being Hurricane Katrina,which brought such devastation to the
Gulf States of the USA during September.The scenes of devastation and hardship were relentlessly beamed to us and it appeared to me
that this was harder to digest and accept for many of us given that this was a principal city in the richest most powerful nation on earth.Speaking to many people during and since this disaster there was general feeling that a need for rapid and coordinated response on a large scale is just as important in the ‘developed’ world as it is in areas where disaster is a little more prevalent – perhaps more so since the timing of such events is harder to predict and because we tend to rely on services and support more than others i.e. when an incident of this nature hits,our way of life means we have rather further to fall than some.
The US put into operation its new and essentially untested disaster relief plan,but the general consensus appears to be that it was not effective nearly quickly enough.The big question is, are we here in the UK any better prepared at the personal,individual emergency service,triservice and multi responder level to react positively in a timely manner? No plan survives first contact in battle, but the British Army is as effective as it is because of its preparedness due to regular training,exercising and regular deployment in support of practical operations.The experts involved in civil contingencies have a pretty good idea of the challenges we may face here in the UK
if not their timing,perhaps if the UK is not to be caught out in a similar way to the US then we need to adopt an organised programme of
localised and widespread exercises that more often include the civil population?Maybe there is a window of opportunity that needs to be exploited by our own government?
I write this on the morning of the last day of the 5th Test for the Ashes.I may live to regret this,but two months ago I suggested we think positive for a victory,I think we have it!
Peter Prater
Chair Commercial Advisory Group
