A hypothetical volcano eruption will require an evacuation as the NSW Government (SES more likely) has issued an alert for a tsunami warning. What would you do? What could the government do? What can your company do?
Individually tailored evacuation plans
I took great interest in information management, communication and reacting dynamically to the scenario. There were a lot of things going on in the question, and each person would respond differently based on their own situation and location, such that it could actually warrant everyone to have their own personal evacuation plan mapped out. I made a comment about disabled people, specifically those in wheelchairs. They have an entirely different evacuation plan to a non-disabled person, as emergency services suggests not to carry people out of their wheelchairs, and have them stay in the fire stairwell for the duration of the evacuation until first responders, who are notified of their presence), comes upstairs to retrieve them. This presents a very complex scenario, because bottlenecks can occur in the event that there is widespread panic and everyone runs down the stairs. A connection can be made here to the 9/11 evacuation of the twin towers, where a narrow section of the stairs (approximately just over a metre wide) caused people to slow down and create a choke point for evacuation.
Disaster simulation
It ultimately means that disaster and evacuation plans needs to be established prior to the incidents, which is also something we touch base on. The government can establish some form of disaster plan to simulate the effects and evacuation efforts for a comparable natural disaster, and then feed this information down to the state and local level so they can implement plans based on the recommendations from the federal level. NSW has never had an extreme tsunami event recorded in history (for example, the recent tsunami generated from the Tongan region produced waves up to 15 metres), and so we would be vastly unprepared for that. Even more so, NSW residents will be even more unprepared.
This idea sprouted from the simulation of a hurricane’s effects one year prior to Katrina’s destruction. Hypothetical Hurricane “Pam” would result in (https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/katrina/govdocs/109-377/pam.pdf):
- 300,000 people would not evacuate in advance;
- 500,000 to 600,000 buildings would be destroyed;
- Phone and sewer services would be knocked out and chemical plants would be flooded;
- 97 percent of all communications would be down;
- About 175,000 people would be injured, 200,000 would become sick, and more than 60,000 would be killed;
- About 1,000 shelters would be needed for evacuees;
- Boats and helicopters would be needed for thousands of rescues because many residents would be stranded by floodwaters;
- A catastrophic flood would leave swaths of southeast Louisiana uninhabitable for more than a year.
Evacuation culture and training
To this point, this can achieve a knock-on effect by promoting awareness and a stronger evacuation culture, not just for the individuals, but for the companies and organisations who will be required to evacuate their staff and/or students. Warden training, from experience, does highlight that tsunamis and tornados are some of the natural disasters that can occur, and most people wouldn’t know what to do about it. Therefore, training people to lead evacuation exercises and events is also vital to ensuring a smooth evacuation.
Further to this point, it was brought up in discussion that the SES has an app that alerts users of any disaster events, however I questioned that this is on the condition that the users have the SES app installed on their phone prior to the event, which could also be enticed through promotion of the app and evacuation or safety culture. Panda raised a similar app is available in New Zealand.
Established chain of command and war room
Hurricane Katrina had a terrible chain of command and war room established. Too many people, too much noise in the one room. The above also highlights the importance of a chain of command and establishing a point of contact for communication. This is something we can link to cybersecurity incident response, where an established war room becomes part of the incident response plan. This room will have the dedicated resources, required personnel and all information will go in and out of the room without any distractions. An organised group in charge will lead a more co-ordinated and effective response effort.
This extends to local evacuation efforts. In the case of UNSW or any other university, trained volunteer emergency wardens should be stationed to cover areas of the faculties and buildings, and their information also needs to be clearly visible and available around campus so people will know:
- Who to contact in an emergency
- Who to listen to in an emergency
- The face to a name
Having a contact who is more familiar with these scenarios will alleviate a lot of concerns and pressure off the individual. This is also evident for cybersecurity incident response, and knowing who to contact in the event of a possible incident or data breach.
Access of information
One thing that was consistently brought up in my room’s discussion was the access of information. General consensus in the group was that we did not immediately defer to calling 000/Emergency for initial information. Social media and websites could provide just as fast, if not faster information than official sources as emergency services would also be scrambling to understand the situation and not have readily available information to communicate to callers. Reliability of information of social media can be determined by spread and confirmation of information from other sources. If 50 people said the same thing on a new topic, it could surely indicate some truths.
As the situation develops and more information is provided, switching to a more verified source of information on developments will help make better judgements as time goes on.