Updating METHANE

We are now going to look at the updated methane, so we have now been on the scene from the minute the call came in, about 90 minutes, so everything's arrived on the scene, the incident commanders have got some grip of what is going on and much more up-to-date information, much more accurate information, so we are going to look at that at methane now and just run through what the current methane will be and then we will look at it, what the Control Room need to know and how they are going to function with it, so your current methane.

Major incident was declared at 12:30 hours. Exact location: Kevin Quarry, Ramshorn, Elliston Road. What3words: Holds, dried, siesta. Type of incident: Landslide. Hazards present, unstable ground, petrol, oil and lubricants, potential further landslide and closing weather. Access via Elliston Road. What3words: Motor, latitude, blur wreck. The number of casualties, 20 confirmed. 10 P3, 5 P2, 5 P1, 30 unaccounted for. Figures three zero unaccounted for. Emergency services on scene, police, fire and ambulance. Rescue commenced at 13:30 hours with heart supporting fire and rescue technical services. Casualty clearing station established. Next JESIP to progress with rescue scheduled for 15:30 hours. Message ends.

So the one thing I noticed about that Justin, this time you have written it down. Can you explain why?

Absolutely, because, well, [A], it is part of your log.

So, you might as well write it down. You have now got a lot more information and it's important to marshal your thoughts and get it right, so actually writing it down before you send it...

It's part of the process, ticks two boxes.

Yes.

So, it's accurate. And [B], you have got a record and it's written.

Yes.

The first one you sent through was not written because it was hot off the press, it was whilst you were there evaluating, so now we have got that log of what is going on and we have got even more accurate information.

I think the other thing to say about that is you will notice that that was given in full.

All too often what actually happens is people say as before, so type of incident as already stated hazards as before. Well, that is great if you are the Control Room because you already know what that information was from the previous Methanes. But you or another officer responding or a doctor who is just being called out of fear to respond to that, you have just switched on your radio, it's your first opportunity to get up-to-date, and as before in that case means nothing to you and therefore it should always be given in full on every update.

So, from a Control Room's perspective what now happens with your second update? Now you have had this one come through, what is going to change anything? Or...

Well, obviously the services have been on the scene for some time, and the updates from the initial update will confirm what resources have been sent to the scene, what is the requirements? Are there any changes? Are the access and egress still the same? Has the casualty numbers changed? Because do not forget, as part of this information that's coming back, there's a lot of people behind the scenes, you want to do a planning assumption in case it's a protected incident, so all that information coming back is building a jigsaw of what and what could happen later on and how long it's going to take to get things moving. [A], hospitals, do we have to go national with burns or certain trauma cases, so that it's building a whole big picture up from the scene.

So if this is... We are talking about the next update at 15:30, I think it was, 15:30 wintertime, lights now dropping, we have got 30, was it casualties that were still unaccounted for?

So we are still going to keep this going, this is not going to finish, we are going to have to keep working through the night potentially, so I suppose you are activating other resources like lighting towers and that type of stuff.

Certainly and the big question is that we want to be have answers to from the people in the Control Room, so that communication between the Control and the incident commander is ongoing, even though they are sending updates every 30 minutes, but there could be sporadic communications within that to answer specific questions or deal with specific issues.

Two things, first of all, I know it's recorded everything that's going through the airway, so that's been logged that way, but do you do any written logs in Control?

All the time. Certainly, the duty manager all have an incident log, the on-call person, if they are in there. Anybody that is dealing with the incident per se, will have to keep their own personal log.

And another question for you is, when... We talked about changing over, so when you have another incident commander come in and take you off because you have been there already for your 12-hour stint we have talked about, but does the same thing happen in Control? Do you get somebody listening in, sitting in, understanding it before they finish the shift, and another one drop?

Yeah, certainly, this incident could happen at changeover time. People will stay on, people will come in early, but at certain parts of this ongoing incident, people will change whether they are going home or staying on. Usually in a major incident, when a major incident is declared, you have more power to keep staff at work and people will volunteer to stay back if an incident warranted it anyway.

So, it's pretty fluid all the time, the changeovers are fluid and everything has to be reactive all the time to any change of situation.

Well and that's part of the information coming back is that you build in... You have a planning assumption. So there are no gaps, everything runs smoothly, best you can, but you need that information coming back and this is a two-way street.

Just before you, just before you come in, if we are talking about the situation that we are talking about here, an estimation, how many members of the ambulance service, for instance, would you say would be active in this situation? Just a rough ballpark figure.

Well, certainly from a front line and operational crews that went into a Control Room, you could talk 100 people at least.

Yeah. It's a lot of people involved.

So I think there are some important points there actually. So whilst ambulance services, some ambulance service has pre-determined attendance, if you say a standby or declared what they are going to send, it's important to realise that those standby and declared assets are only designed to deal with the frontend and establishing casualty clearing, loading, parking, they are not designed to do the transportation element. The transportation element will have to be sent afterwards. But on the other hand, we don't want to send it all at once because actually, as Adrian pointed out earlier, there is a day job to do, I'm going to wait for the transportation assets until I've actually got casualties that need transporting rather than have crew sitting around doing nothing.

So we might not send two crew paramedic ambulances, we may be sending cars, we may be sending patient transport vehicles with just seats in the back, all depending on what the casualties are.

So we are going to send the appropriate resources to remove the appropriate casualties in the appropriate ways.

Absolutely. Right patient, right time, right place, in that sense. We were talking about handover there and I think it's important to know we talked about the commander's handover, but if it's a protracted incident, you have probably got a full command support team there, you have probably got the equipment, logistics, safety officer, communications officer, NILO, etcetera. So you can actually have a quiet, command team of six or seven there, in some incidents.

It's important not to change the whole lot at once. Yep, so whilst the commander changes over at one period in time, leave it two hours before you change the next person in the command team, leave it two hours before you change that next person in the command team. Otherwise, if you change more than once, you just lose continuity about what's going on.

Absolutely, yeah. I think also what a lot of people forget as well is for a site like this, they do not look at the bigger picture, they look at their own site, but we have talked about 100 people, potentially more, from the emergency services, just the ambulance side. You could end up with at least that many from the fireside. You could also end up with... When you look at the hospital... Just out of, again, curiosity, do the ambulance control liaise with the hospital to stand the hospital up, so as hospital are prepared for the causalities coming in as well? Is that another role that has to be done at your end that a lot of people do not think about?

That will happen, certainly even on standby, I make them aware there's an incident ongoing with the potential for them to receive numerous casualties with varying degrees of problems and medical issues.

Okay. So it then spans to possibly one, two, three, four hospitals, maybe more, so we could be into the thousands of people that are involved in just this one incident that happened in this one little quarry in the middle of nowhere?

So, again, it's about an appropriate tragedy regulation plan, which Control has a big input to, because actually, the command on the scene hasn't got the time to talk to each individual hospital and go, "Well, can you take this many?" All that. That's what the Control Room do. So when I call back to Adrian and go, "I have got 20 P1's," he'll go, "Yeah, 10 to Queens, five to Stoke, five to somewhere else."