Towards a Baltic Sea Region Strategy in Critical ... - Helsinki.fi

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION IN THE BALTIC SEA REGION
Two days after the incident, more than 90% of the mobile network was
operational. In comparison, several customers lacked fixed phone communications
for several weeks.
Overall, all fire departments who had planned for communication
breakdowns, and had redundant- and/or backup equipment in place, managed quite
all right.
Indirect Impacts of Power Blackouts
Elderly or disabled people are especially vulnerable to blackouts. Several nursing
homes were affected by the blackout and evacuations were considered but never
executed. Some municipalities combined their inhabitant registries with
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in order to locate and reach elderly people
living on their own. There are no accounts of whether the fire departments were
directly involved with the evacuation of people, although it is highly likely.
Some fire stations equipped with backup power acted as ‘warm cottages’ for
the public, i.e. a place where people could warm themselves and get the latest
information about what is going on. Schools and community centres were also
used for this purpose. Some areas experienced water distribution problems, which
could have required measures from the emergency services, had they been
prolonged.
The availability of fuel for vehicles and equipment was not affected, mainly
due to the fact that larger population areas were not suffering from power
blackout. However, there were problems with the distribution of fuel to backup
power generators, as previously mentioned. These were due to lack of organization
and logistics, and blocked roads.
Experiencies and Plans of Improvement
The biggest need for improvement is the development of independent emergency
supplies. When everything else fails, the emergency services should be prepared
and equipped to continue their operations independently.
The role of the part-time fire stations during exceptional situations turned out
to be significant; hence many fire stations are now being equipped with backup
power facilities. Most of the command centres are also resistant to power
blackouts nowadays.
The radio communication problems between authorities will be solved by the
introduction of the digital TETRA-based RAKEL network. Important cooperation
partners from the third sector (power and telephone companies) are also going to
be a part of this network, thus eliminating the interoperability problems.
Additional resources have been allocated to make the base stations even more
robust; all stations will have backup batteries and many will be equipped with
automatic power generators designed for longer blackouts.
Emergency dispatching relies heavily on the telephone communication
networks. Therefore measures are to be taken to improve the reliability of these as
well. If the systems were to fail in spite of the precautions, backup systems for
reporting incidents and alerting rescue units should be ready to put into action with
little or no delay.
Concerning the reliability of information systems, there were some problems
due to the usage of centralized servers. To reduce vulnerability in situations like
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