Défis, leçons et de passer...

Challenges, Lessons and Moving on....that is the title of this blog entry.

In a previous assignment for my Bachelor Degree in Emergency Management, we had to review an incident and the process of decision making under stressful situations.

I found this topic fascinating and it generated interesting discussions about making decisions in times of stress (both operationally and personally) and the current trend in reviews.

On a personal level I am a fan of taking time to reflect on what challenges a situation has highlighted, how those can be turned into lessons to teach others and finally of course, learning from mistakes and moving on, ensuring they are not repeated.

In relation to the attacks on Paris, which resulted in the highest death toll in Paris since the end of the WW2, there were a number of issues raised by Brigadier General Philippe Boutinaud.

• Clarity in communications during incidents is critical to avoid confusion

• Sheer volume of information can be overwhelming

• Public were under the assumption that they could be located via smart phone GPS.

• Brigadier General Philippe Boutinaud would use social media and social networks sooner

From an operational view point they had:

• 450 firefighters on site

• 250 support staff

• 1000 people on stand by

• 21 medical teams deployed

• 125 vehicles deployed

• Hospitals – 40 medical teams on site; activation of white plan; 2 military hospitals used

• 500 rescue workers deployed

• 3,000 police officers

• 1,500 soldiers

• 130 people dead

• 481 injured people

• 4000 people with identified psych issues

• 17 nationalities among the deceased

What did they learn?

Brigadier General Philippe Boutinaud was keen to promote resilience – he wanted to be 100 % operational by 8am following day. In addition to the terrorist incident they were 150 different related calls at same time.

Afterwards, Brigadier General Philippe Boutinaud was keen to support medical and psychiatric support and as a result over 850 firefighters were assessed. Brigadier General Philippe Boutinaud placed great importance on this as he had peers who had been impacted in the past by previous incidents. He was assessed himself and got firefighters to write a report immediately after the attacks. 28% of personnel needed second assessments. After 6 months about 5-8 people need long-term help - mainly due to the fact they had been personally affected such as having relatives killed during the attacks.

They also realised that most of the population did not have basic life-saving skills. This is in contrast to Norway where 97% of the population are trained at school level. In France, it is only 20%.

As a result, an educational first aid program was held on Saturday mornings for 2 hours (since January 2016). The course looked at recovery positions, information to give when they call 112, stop bleeding and CPR. 5,000 people have been trained to date with a target of 12,000 by end of year. Interestingly they had low uptake in high migrant areas – perhaps fear of engaging with authorities.

They continue to adapt relevant doctrine and are happy with Red Alpha plan. Some minor changes had been made to zoning (extract – controlled – support) and are working more with police in relation to training. They have improved basic CBRN kits and Yellow Plan Alpha is now updated to cover multiple contamination sites. All fire, ambulances now equipped with decontamination units. Police are now considering firefighting extraction teams equipped with helmets, camera and flak jackets although this is causing concerns in some quarters.

In terms of operational readiness, at a local level, they have identified potential targets and identified relevant training scenarios with police. At a higher level, command post exercises involving partners and liaison officers are held every Saturday and every 2 months they have combined exercises with other partners. Police officers also now do a 4 weeks “COS” training and many cross-agency training i.e. forensics.

There has been a joint call center for police and fire since Jan 2016 (this was already planned).

The following equipment items have been improved:

• Stretchers

• Damage control kits (tourniquets, haemostatic’s dressing, blankets) (already planned)

• 1 support vehicle per fire group

• Protection Kits in fire stations in case of attack (night sticks, bulletproof vests, defense gas)

• Radio Transmission support – vehicle support with satellite in case networks are down; wifi bubble around vehicle; radios now on 4G system

• CCTV – commander has access to networks, moving towards to all networks including public transport.

• Robotics and simulation – for explorations and complex threats.

What are the next steps?

• Reviewing worse case situations – saturation of hospitals; difficulty of equipment for children; complexity of evacuations

• Taboo attack – hospitals, school, church – psychological effects, specific difficulties with community

• CBRN – 13 scenarios identified by authorities, analysis of Brussels attack

• Paris Hackathon – priority to urgent calls, social media alerts, advice to population

• SINUS – extended to national level

• Share experience – conferences, heads of 28 European firefighter brigade to meet in June.

• Also, practice for cyber attack

• In 3-4 days over 2,000 members of the public were seen by psychologist

• Current issue is who left scene cannot apply for compensation or be recognised as victims

He concluded by telling us that they have been three government investigations into the attacks -one open to the public and media and two closed inquiries.

To conclude, this was a very complex incident and as always lessons were learnt in areas that were managed well and not so well. He provided a fascinating insight into how mass casualty terrorist incidents worked in reality. The session concluded with thoughts and discussion about how well prepared and equipped WA is to deal with a similar event.

Since that time I have emailed Brigadier General Philippe Boutinaud to discuss some of the points raised in further detail and will continue to research into this area further.