Red Cross Blogs

Fintastic logistics training

By Claire Durham
May 29, 2009 at 9:44 pm

Another week, another country, another training course. This time I was in Finland, in a place called Tampere, which is Finland’s second biggest city. The Finns are quite keen on ranking things by size I discovered. It was here on the banks of the Tammerkoski Rapids in south-western Finland where the Nokia company was first set up. This was before it relocated to the town of Nokia and took on the name. Lucky really as “Äteritsiputeritsipuolilautatsijänkä connecting people” isn’t quite so snappy a slogan!

The Finnish Red Cross is the latest National Society to set up a logistics emergency response unit (ERU) so my lovely boss and I had been asked to come along as facilitators, to run some sessions and generally help out at the technical training. The technical training is a chance to set up and use all of the toys and gadgets that we take with us to the field. We run a mock ‘disaster’ so the participants have to work as the logistics ERU team. It’s also a chance to camp and enjoy the great outdoors!

Whilst the facilitators didn’t have to camp, we did ‘enjoy’ communal living in quite close quarters. Luckily pyjamas and an eye mask were the first two things I packed. I never wear earplugs for two reasons (a) because I hate the feeling of sensory deprivation when I’m wearing the aforementioned eye mask and (b) I can sleep through anything. I’m not sure if the same can be said of my sleeping companions and I can only hope they were packing ear plugs because they were about to discover that I have a very annoying habit of talking in my sleep!

The Finnish training grounds were a little more fragrant that the one in Austria and marginally more picturesque with pine trees and rolling hills around a lake. Obviously there was a lake! Finland has around 188,000 lakes so it’s almost impossible to go anywhere not trip over (or splash into) some kind of body of water.

Thankfully I was also more fragrant on this trip too, mainly due to the nightly sauna ritual. Getting naked with colleagues and sweltering in 80°C heat inside a wooden box may not be everyone’s idea of fun but the sauna is an icon of Finnishness and I’m very much a fan. It’s actually very relaxing and sociable and indulging in the post-sauna drinks is a lovely way to rehydrate yourself. In a land of 5.3 million people and 2 million saunas, you can start to get the picture of how important the sauna is in Finnish culture.

When it comes to food, the British and Finnish fare are very similar. If it’s stodgy and bland then it’s on the menu and that’s not a criticism. If you love porridge, bread, potato, and sausage (and I do) you’re going to love Finnish cuisine! Normally on the British Red Cross ERU training we can get through a mountain sized pile of biscuits, am I’m talking K2 here rather than Primrose Hill. JC our warehouse manager returns from the shops laden down stating “surely this will be enough to get them through the week?” But without fail by the third day all that remains are a few digestive crumbs and half a custard cream. The Finnish Red Cross were taking no such chances, they cut to the chase and went for the standard three meals a day and then ramped it up with a ‘late night snack’ which for all intents and purposes could be classified as a fourth meal.

On the first night during the evening session we were told that we wouldn’t be allowed to pump out any water from the lake the following day. This was a bit of a disappointment as a water and sanitation (WatSan) training was also happening at the same time and water is quite key to the whole thing. The reason we couldn’t pump the water out the following day was due to a fly fishing competition that was taking place on the lake. I’m not a fly fishing expert but even I could appreciate that the hum of the diesel water pump and the rapid removal of water might not be conducive to the competition.

So with that it was all hands on deck and the facilitators headed out to set up the pump and pipes. Having learnt about this stuff in Austria I was keen to hone my skills so I took charge of the ‘c’ keys and got to work connecting up the pipes under the watchful eye of my counter part Miia. You can only gauge if the seals are 100% watertight when the pump is switched on. If not then there will be leakage somewhere between a trickle and a geyser that could give Old Faithful a run for its money. I am happy to report that all connections were water tight, and Miia can bear witness to that, so I was feeling quite chuffed with my new skill.

While watching the 8000-litre tank fill up, I couldn’t help comment on the remarkably clean water coming from the lake. I was told that even in this state the water is perfectly clean enough to drink. Which when you think about it, doesn’t present much of a challenge to the WatSan team. I was then shown the bags of clay and pots of bacteria that would be added to the lake water to make is sufficiently filthy before the exercise. How ironic!

On day two the sun shone brightly and we started the main task of setting up the tented warehouse often known by their brand name ‘Rubbhall’ or ‘Wiikhall’ These are monster tents that are made up of pieces of aluminium that bolt together to make a frame 10 metres wide by 24 metres long and 5 metres high and pieces of PVC coated fabric which make the cover. Luckily we had favourable weather and a technician from the manufacturer to guide us through. The technician’s name was Tomas and his favourite phrase was “RTF” or refer to the manual. Whilst I did agree with him that the ‘handy pictures’ did go a long way to illustrating out what needed to be done, the use of phrases in said manual such as keder track and ridge purlin left me somewhat baffled.

It was far more technical than I had imagined with the use of a measuring tape and a good grasp of geometry, a topic I’m almost certain I haven’t fully utilised since leaving school. This allowed us to check that the framework angles were correct and if not then to move the frame poles into the right position. I am pretty certain that in the real world, which for us means the immediate aftermath of a big disaster, the tape measure and the geometry lessons will be abandoned in favour of a lot of shouting along the lines of “this way a bit” and “back to you a little” and the use of a large mallet in knock it into shape. I’d be surprised if the manual even sees the light of day! Still it’s good to know how it should be done

Another session on the course was the deployment exercise where we create a pretend disaster, in a made up country and then role-played the scenario. It requires a fair amount of imagination and spirit from all those involved to get into character and the participants had bucket loads of enthusiasm and got stuck in. In this case our disaster hit country was Zuboumba and it had been ravaged by Hurricane Hannah. We were playing the parts of the typical people who are part of the response including Red Cross roles and others such as customs officials, airport managers and transport suppliers. The teams had to perform the typical logistics tasks of finding a warehouse and trucks, getting the blankets and jerrycans and other life saving goods that we call non food items (NFI) to the people that need them. It is as real a situation as we can possible create and I realised just how realistic and valuable the training is when I went to Bangladesh after Cyclone Sidr at the end of 2007. Whilst the training sounds like a lot of fun, and I’ll be honest it is a lot of fun, it also has a serious side and we would not be as good at what we do if we didn’t put the time and effort into getting the training right.

On the last day, whilst everyone else was breaking camp, my boss and I snuck off to have a bit of four-wheel driving practise. Our vehicle of choice was one of the new Land Cruisers, which we took out for a quick jaunt, well about an hour and a half if I’m totally honest. Failed hill starts are my favourite and in case you were wondering, you can’t just let the car roll down backwards because it will slide and then tip over. I don’t know about you but personally I like my car to be on all four wheels with the roof pointing towards the sky. I had a best of three competition with myself to see how high I could get up the hill before the car stalled.

We also had a go at crossing ridges without getting the vehicle stuck or wedged and controlled hill descents. Basically to go down a hill you put the car into gear with the four wheel drive on and keeping your feet away from the brake and the clutch you let the Cruiser do it’s thing. If the ground is muddy and the car starts to slip and slide and generally speed up then the correct thing to do is hit the accelerator. The ACCELERATOR! I know, I know! For those city drivers amongst us (and I include myself in that group) it goes against everything we’ve ever learnt.

In the world of two-wheel drive and tarmac the correct procedure when the car is going too fast is to hit the brake. However in off-roading if you touch the brake the wheels will lock up and the car will start to slip and slide at greater speed. Executing this manoeuvre may produce screams of terror and a general feeling of overwhelming panic. You have been warned! By stepping on the gas you increase the speed of the wheels and hey ho control is returned as if by magic! However I think the phrase “don’t try this at home folks” should be bandied around at this stage. I’d also like to point out that we generally don’t drive when we work abroad but instead use local and experienced drivers. However in case of an emergency such as the driver being taken ill we need to be able to get ourselves and the team back home.

Finally it was time to go home so after a quick shopping trip around Stockman to pick up those key Finnish essential; rye bread, breakfast cheese, salmiakki and moomin biscuits we headed to the check-in desk. The Finnair check-in staff helpfully tried to sit me and the boss together and was greeted with my horrified response of “Oh no, we don’t want to sit together” at which point her dazzling smile was swiftly replaced with a looking of utter bemusement. Admittedly my response sounded better in my head and I’d like to say it is not evidence of my meanness or a slur on my boss.

We had already mutually and strategically selected seat 20A and 20F with the aim of getting a row of three seats each and I was not planning on having that dream shattered even in the spirit of forced bonhomie.

So with a cursory glance out of the window and muttering a final “tiedätkö, sekä poronkäristys että veriohukaiset näyttävät hyviltä” the plane took off and I stretched out across seats 20A, B and C and wondered what the following week would have in store for me!

© Tiina Jakonen/ Finnish Red Cross

© Tiina Jakonen/ Finnish Red Cross

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Tags: disaster, emergency response, emergency response unit, Finland, finnish red cross, International, logistics, Tampere, training

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 9:44 pm and is filed under Emergencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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