Over the years we’ve spent a lot of time planning for, exercising and responding to major floods within the UK ranging from widespread coastal flooding of a large swathe of the south coast to rapid onset pluvial (rain related) flooding.

In light of this experience and several novel ideas that I’ve been discussing in multi-agency groups, I was approached yesterday to speak at the forthcoming public sector flooding conference to be held at the Barbican in London on 25 Jun 09 – which unfortunately I could not do due to other speaking commitments.

Nevertheless it got me focused on flooding again in between managing swine flu and other major contingency planning work and has encouraged me to put “fingers and mouse to keyboard” (is that the modern alternative to “pen to paper”?).

As ever, prevention is better than cure so making sure your business is not situated in a flood zone is a good start and most people have figured that out after seeing the recent widespread river-based floods in Gloucester and York over the past couple of years; but a lot of people haven’t yet clutched in to the risks associated with heavy rainfall in urban situations where increasing hard landscaping and aging, overwhelmed Victorian drainage often runs at 80% capacity even before the rain starts to fall.

I’ve seen several examples of this including schools and a GPs surgery situated at the bottom of a hill with a large sloping car park channelling the rain right into the reception and onward to the server room and call centre from which a county’s out of hours calls were handled!

The rainfall doesn’t even need to be heavy enough to cause any depth of flooding – just getting the drains to overflow when the system is mixed with sewage below ground can cause a major problem. In Portsmouth we had several schools and a nursery closed for several days after a 40 minute downpour because we had to clean and disinfect the entire school after pupils trudged raw sewage everywhere.

This event also highlighted the difficulties over who owns what part of the problem as local authorities outsource road and gulley cleaning to contractors, water companies split service provision between drinking water and wastewater/sewage providers and different parts of the pipework lie on various landowners property preventing all of the above from accessing the system to manage an incident at cause.

For the poor citizen caught in the middle of this, it’s a disaster. Passed from pillar to post by various call-centres and “help-desks” that refer them from one place to another as the waters continue to threaten the electrical sockets and ruin the often uninsured furniture and fittings. A situation exacerbated by the government’s social care policies which aim to provide independent living but instead put vulnerable people at increased risk during emergency situations.

One solution to this is advanced multi-agency planning (in both senses of the word) whereby a single emergency number is used to feed situational reports into a coordinated response centre that can triage the calls and provide the best service from pooled resources on a priority basis.

Regretably, in a “rising tide “situation (no pun intended) the multi-agency response is not triggered in time since the emergency services need to be at risk of being overwhelmed before they activate SILVER and most of the problems are tactically and politically low impact even if they are severe for individual families or businesses.

When you get into a coastal flooding scenario the problems multiply because you then involve the coastguard and even the military if MACC and MACP rules apply.

It is then that you really see which Emperors (or Generals) are naked as keen military staff officers start planning to put the QE2 off Hayling Island in a Force 10 onshore gale to pick up civilians wading from the beach and up the gangway with their kids, horses, dogs and pythons for a quick trip to Cowes (it was lovely when they were there with the regimental yacht – bless!) where they’ll drop them off (without cash or a hotel to go to and now separated from the mainland!).

As Black Adder would say “there’s only one problem with that plan Baldrick – it’s completely bollocks!”.

You might also find it’s more complicated than you imagine to find a boat or even a large volume of hardcore to repair sea defences at low tide until you try it. You might be surprised to learn that the Navy can’t help you because oddly enough their boats are on ships and their people are too so you end up relying on a couple of Fire and Rescue Service rigid inflatable boats (which can only operate in a meter and a half depth because of the outboard motor) provided that the local fire service has had the foresight and training to procure and use them and haven’t been replaced by a regional call centre!

I could go on but I already have. Plan, exercise, test, revise and don’t ASSuME. You know the routine…

I note in my mailbox today that the New Zealand Health Minister Tony Ryall is declaring a policy of “keep it out, stamp it out” as regards Influenza A/H1N1. The Aussies tried this the last time we had a pandemic strain and found that they got a worse hit during the second wave.

I can understand the temptation to delay spread until a vaccine is available – if you can make enough in time for the whole population – but with the vaccine predicted to take until September 2009 (WHO) to be ready this is not going to be possible – especially when you consider the rules of the game require countries to share the vaccine around with other countries on a priority basis.

Perhaps the over-riding issues in the management of this pandemic are related to minismising financial loss? Certainly the negative affects of poor publicity relating to the “swine flu” have influenced decisions to stop reporting spread (USA) and in some cases bring people back from the dead (Mexico).

Perhaps the best thing to do is to allow the spread of the virus whilst it is mild and build some immunity. As Ministers keep telling us – “The NHS has never been better prepared”. The reality is of course that the hospitals are not prepared and don’t have enough ventilators to cope with a large influx of seriously ill patients with respiratory tract infections so countries are playing for time.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

Had an interesting discussion with a purveyor of FFP3 flu masks today and revisited various documents and sites to see whether my views on masks as a mitigation against catching H1N1 remain the same.

Evidence from tests carried out by the Health Protection Agency show that you have 100 times more protection from live viruses if you wear a properly fitted FFP3 mask so as a personal choice it makes sense if you think that the risk of catching the flu is very high and the symptoms of the flu become more severe (or you have a heightened risk profile due to an underlying condition).

For companies you have to balance the legal requirements to provide adequate Personal Protective Equipment based on a risk assessment. If you decide to provide (that’s got a nice ring to it!) then you need to make sure they are fitted – which opens up a world of logistical issues and costs including training staff how to don them, writing policy about when to change them and procuring suitable testing equipment to provide an audit trail that you have done as much as you can to safeguard your staff.

At the moment you need to focus on seasonal flu as the higher risk but as H1N1 continues to spread and mix with other viruses it can mutate and change into something more deadly.

The WHO alert state is likely to be increased to level 6 tomorrow in light of the virus’s sustained person to person spread. You might want to dust off your plan and check what actions you committed to back in the day when you wrote it.

@Veterus Jun 2009