SURVIVAL! Are Firefighters A Dying Breed? Spotlight on Geoff ...

IS YOUR TECHNICAL RESCUE TEAM ALERT
TO ENCROACHING ENVIRONMENTAL CLIMATIC CHANGES?
Predict, Assess, and Prepare Now!
by Geoff Williams
MIFireE, MIMgt, ChFl, CIETecRI
Deputy Firemaster,
Central Scotland Fire Brigade, U.K.
Technical Rescue teams should commence
closer working with meteorological
organizations to initiate predicting
and customizing weather trends.
<strong>Are</strong>as deemed vulnerable should be
assessed and pre-planned for. This
pre-planning should take account of
the type of PPE and rescue equipment
used by rescue personnel in order to
ensure its suitability for this type of
new, encroaching environment.
A review should commence to ensure
that existing strategic command and
control centers can remain operative
during ‘worst-case’ scenarios. Closer
collaboration between all agencies
should be considered to ensure combined
cross boundary operations provide
the best use of resources.
Incentive and Inventive Legislation
Within the USA, under a new law,
states that prepare for natural disasters
are being rewarded. They can get
an extra 20 percent in government
paid cleanup costs if they helped fortify
for hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes,
etc., which includes shoring up
buildings, constructing roads and
water systems, and making utility
18 CUSTOMER SUPPORT 800.932.3386
infrastructures more enduring.
Companies doing cleanup work will be
paid faster and have less paperwork.
The significance of this law is far
more than its content, as it recognizes
the seriousness of natural disasters
and has used incentives to motivate
corrective action and provide a solution.
It is a new concept, and it is
innovative in using incentives to solve
problems. Most practical disaster
problems can be solved with people,
money and material, but the true victory
is achieved by using the mind.
And that brings us back to ourselves.
We can make a difference. President
Kennedy once stated, “One man can
make a difference, and every man
should try.” This phrase well defines
the task of the Technical Rescue services.
Technological Integration
and Application
The International Emergency
Technical Rescue Institute
(http://www.fire.org.uk/ECL) recommends
that we should attach ourselves
to the newly created technologies
that will assist us in predicting
emerging threats and opportunities.
Whether you embrace it or not, our
business is justifiably going international.
During the earthquakes in
India, I observed over the Internet
real-time destruction in that country.
Today, certain previously catastrophestricken
countries have risen like
phoenix from the ashes of destruction.
Turkey now has an international rescue
contingent to save lives and promote
restoration. Such international
missions have immense social
impacts and tend to bring the world
closer together, but equally, the
absence of a nation willing to offer
‘hands-on’ humanitarian aid can have
the exact opposite effect.
We should not spend scarce finances
to build a communications infrastructure
when one already exists. Unfortunately,
that practice is becoming ubiquitous
in order to underwrite global rescue
missions and tackle the omnipresent
terrorist threat. The Internet can be
ever increasingly exploited to serve our
tactical purposes.
We need to ensure our political masters
understand and support our scientific
and technological organizations
in designing systems that will help
alleviate future tragedies.
ECL — Structural Collapse Critical
Crisis Tool Intelligence
I have personally researched over
three thousand global collapse incidents,
and I have analyzed and identified
generic events that continually
recur at some stage during an incident.
I then utilized my “Value Stage
RACE Analysis,” which I designed to
find the types of hindrances they
caused the incident management
teams. It soon became apparent that
the same issues were always present.
Therefore, the task of finding how
these could be best (with hindsight)
managed was the next stage of finding
a solution. Once a solution had
been found, it was then further reanalyzed
to ensure it helped the actual
Technical Rescue team’s rescue
mission. What was simple, plain information
now became transformed into
expert, intelligence-based solutions.
These solutions are now held within
the ECL computer software critical crisis
tool.
Incident Command teams often
underestimate how these ‘events’ and
the people that are linked to them can
severely disrupt and hinder their effectiveness,
if they are not properly dealt
with at a very early stage. Current
incident management teams deal with
the majority of these occurrences as
they arise and until now they have
never systematically been analyzed
as to how they hinder or deviate
teams from their primary objectives.
Utilizing the new ECL has been
proven to increase building/structural
collapse management by 35%, thus
increasing the victims’ chance of survival
and increasing rescuer safety
during the assignment.
For more information, visit:
http://www.globalcrisiscenter.com