Red Cross Blogs

Fake earthquakes are good for you

By Mark Cox
September 15, 2010 at 4:07 pm

Ah, you lose some, you lose some. You may have read in some newspapers lately about a major emergency training exercise that the Red Cross was involved in. Apparently, it was a bizarre exercise, a shock and a waste of valuable resources.

Funny that. Because every time there’s a big disaster – such as the London bombings – you’ll inevitably come across news stories criticising the ‘lack of preparation and co-ordination’ among emergency responders. So which one is it: are we over-trained or not trained enough? Surely we can’t be both.

Most of last week’s reports leapt with relish on the fact that the exercise used the ‘extremely unlikely’ scenario of an earthquake. But that’s rather missing the point. It doesn’t really matter what imaginary disaster is chosen – bombing, earthquake, plane crash – because it didn’t actually happen. It’s the response and how all the agencies work together that counts.

Besides, as a fire service spokesman put it: “The exercise was deliberately organised to challenge all teams to the limit, to prepare them for the unthinkable.” But of course, that’s not going to make a good news splash and so we had the mock-outraged stories. Plus ca change…

By definition, those dealing with major disasters only get a proper chance to fully do their job when there’s actually a disaster. It’s almost a unique position. Imagine an actor in perpetual rehearsal for the role of their lifetime, only the performance will be for one night only and they haven’t a clue when the curtain’s going to rise. That’s about the measure of it.

And at that crucial moment, when the world suddenly turns upside down, mass panic sets in and screaming casualties need help, each of the emergency responders are thrust into a high-pressure situation where they immediately need to work smoothly together – and where their every decision could have huge consequences.

Does anyone really think it’s a good idea for them to go into those kinds of situations completely cold? Really? Far from being a waste of money, the exercises are very useful. They provide a golden opportunity for all the police, ambulance, fire and local authority people to gauge their abilities and iron out any communication and co-ordination problems under safe, controllable circumstances.

Which means, when a disaster does strike, they’ll be much better placed to respond effectively and save lives. If that’s bizarre and wasteful, then I’m all for it.

---

Comment (0) »

---

Tags: earthquake, Emergencies, emergency response

The Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 15th, 2010 at 4:07 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.

---