Locally available assets

Now we are going to have a look at what other resources we have got. So, locally available assets, so, in the control room, what have you actually got on tap? Who can you actually call from your control room?

For instance, there is voluntary organisations, depending on whereabouts you are in the country, whether you are by the coast or inland. There are Mountain Rescue 4x4 Clubs.

Access and egress, you can use them to get vehicles in if you need to.

There are so many... There is a multitude, a variety of organisations you can use and you will have those listed as part of your plans anyway within the control room. Also, there is a Civil Contingencies Unit that, for protracted incidents, whether it is getting... As I said before, it is light shelters and everything else that you can't provide, but you know somebody that can provide that function if and when required.

So, we basically have a log of all these different contact numbers, all these different services, and you can pick whoever you want and call them up and see what they are about.

Say then and if you get in touch with these voluntary organisations, they will always know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody that can get involved, but you have the core assets at your discretion when needed.

And don't forget, this incident is fluid, so things change all the time. So, you just need to have that information, and then it is reliant on information coming back, so you can make decisions in a real-time situation of what you may need next.

So, that would come from you Dan, as an incident commander, if you have got a problem. Let's say this... We had a heavy rainfall. Access and egress became difficult for the vehicles to move, so you needed something to tow or something to actually get people in and out, you would then ask control, I take it, to try and find you an asset to sort that problem out.

I would either ask control or I would get the NILO, the National Interagency Liaison Officer, he is best known as the man with the biggest phonebook in the world, to be able to get hold of them and utilise those assets.

That is their role. They will know what assets are there, not only locally, but in fact nationally as well, and what the capability of those organisations are, and more importantly, how long it takes to mobilise and for them to be there because that will affect your decision-making process on how you are going to use them. So, as an example, just take something as simple as a mutual aid from another ambulance service, which sounds nice and easy, doesn't it? But if one ambulance service wanted a cell, a cell is 10 ambulances and one officer, from another ambulance service, and you ask for it, their answer will depend on how you use it. If they say, "Oh, yeah. No problem, BJ, 60 minutes. We will be there." "Well, okay. Fine, I'll use them directly on the job." If it turns out, "Oh, that is going to be a problem, mate. That is going to take me about two and a half hours to put that together." "Okay, fine, I still take them, mate." And I'll take out the day job and I'll use them to backfill the day job when they arrive. So, you are still taking the mutual aid, but because of the amount of time it will take them depends on how you are going to utilise them.

So, the decision then is the day job being that the core ambulance response on the road, so you are going to put them into that role and pull your road vehicles into your major incident. So, you are not going to send the mutual aid into the major incident. You are going to leave them to do the day job, as we call it, and then bring them into... Your own services into the incident. So, you are planning on time and distance and numbers, how you are going to utilise them to the best of their abilities, whether it's on the road backfilling up your crews or whether it's actually at the major incident taking patients away.

So you have always got to think about what effect am I trying to achieve here rather than, "I want to use that for that."