Emergency Services
Any major incident will see the involvement of police, emergency services and your local authority.
The police will move everybody to a place of safety and keep people away from the scene. The fire service will save lives by search and rescue, fight fires, assist with fire prevention, and ensure safety management.
The ambulance service will save lives, provide care and treatment to those injured, provide resources, equipment and medical staff, alert hospitals, and evacuate the injured.
The local authority will provide support for the emergency services, and those affected by the disaster, offer information to the public, co-ordinate services of the voluntary sector and other agencies, and assess the structural stability of buildings.
If your organisation is involved with a major incident which is attended by the emergency services you should be aware of the procedures which they will follow. Although there are minor differences across the country the organisational framework for the response is similar.
The response is at three levels - operational, tactical and strategic. Whether or not all three levels are needed will depend the scale of the incident, and the best way to understand what might happen is to look at an example:
Assume that a chemical tanker has had a brake failure and has run into a department store on a busy Saturday morning. People are injured and a small fire has broken out. A policeman will probably be the first person on the scene. His job is to assess what damage there is and to report back to his headquarters. Shortly afterwards fire appliances and ambulances arrive. The fire-fighters attack the fire and the ambulance personnel look after the injured. The police at the scene will require assistance from a member of the store staff who is familiar with the layout of the premises and the contents. All this is happening at the OPERATIONAL (sometimes called Bronze) level.
However, it is apparent soon that help is needed to as the fire starts to spread throughout the building. More fire appliances arrive and the senior fire officer at the scene becomes concerned about the effect of the increasing heat on the chemical carrier. He seeks expert advice from the chemical company and he asks the police to provide a cordon around the area to keep onlookers away and to enable the emergency services to work without people getting under their feet.
The store implements its emergency plan, which includes such things as evacuation, salvage of specific items and so on. As the police, fire and ambulance service have to work closely together they set up a TACTICAL (sometimes called Silver) level headquarters in mobile command centres just outside the police cordon. The management of the incident is undertaken from here, co-ordinated by the police. Only authorised people are allowed through the cordon onto the scene of the incident. The police may require attendance at this tactical centre by someone from the store, probably the manager.
The fire increases in intensity and the senior fire officer becomes very concerned for the safety of the public, since there is now a very great danger of the tanker exploding because of the intense heat. If the tanker explodes a poisoned cloud could spread out over local shops and a neighbouring housing estate. He considers that local people should be warned and that they may need to evacuate the immediate area. So a STRATEGIC (sometimes called Gold) level headquarters is set up well away from the incident, usually at police headquarters.
The police call a meeting of a Senior Co-ordination Group, made up from senior people from the fire and ambulance services, local authority, health authority and so on. It is this group which will decide on the need to evacuate, with the consequent setting up of reception centres in pre-designated buildings such as schools or sports halls. The media will be contacted and warnings broadcast on local radio. It is possible that the police may also require a senior representative from the store or its head office to attend meetings, particularly if the store is a very large employer or if there are manufacturing processes or chemicals on site which might constitute a danger to the public.
In the event of a large number of fatalities the police may set up a casualty bureau. This has two functions. The first is to answer calls from members of the public through a telephone number which has been broadcast on local or national media. The second is to take information from hospitals and other facilities, such as the managers of the site where the incident occurred, about the people who have been killed and injured so that positive identification of casualties can be confirmed. It is then a police responsibility to inform relatives.
It is clearly important that your arrangements tie in with those of the emergency services, so you should discuss your plans with your local authority Emergency Planning Officer. For example you will need to have planned how designated members of your staff will identify themselves if, having evacuated the site, they wish to return through the police cordon, or you will need to tell the emergency services of any special arrangements if they have to gain access to your premises.