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Interim Report - November 2001

Issues associated with Warning the Public

During the last few years there have been a number of incidents throughout the country where problems have been experienced in providing timely warning and information to members of the public. These are summarised in Appendix A [PDF 107KB].

The problems experienced by the responding agencies have varied depending on the nature and timing of the incident, and the advice to be given to members of the public. They include:

Use of the media
Whilst the value of the media in informing the public should not be underestimated, not everyone is listening to either TV or radio when they need to be alerted to an emergency. Often the immediate alerting phase has been passed before the media have had an opportunity to broadcast the warning information.

Appendix D [PDF 106KB] details some of the issues associated with the use of the media including:

• Information on viewing figures at different times of the day/evening

• The increasing move towards entertainment only channels

• Average daily viewing/listening figures

The increasing numbers of digital TV and radio stations will increase the problems associated with using the media as a means of quickly alerting the population to an emergency, although digital communications technology may also provide an opportunity for better targeted warnings

Transient population
Depending on the location and time of the incident there could be a large percentage of the population in transit, either on public transport, in their own vehicles or on foot at the time. The ability to alert these people to the need to take shelter or evacuate is an essential component to any successful handling of the incident.

Resident population
As suggested above, not everyone located within their home is likely to be listening to TV or radio. Some could be in their gardens, others listening to hi-fi systems operating vacuum cleaners or have other ambient sounds behind sound insulating double glazing that distract from any external warnings given by sirens or loud speaker vehicles.

The limitations of loud speaker vehicles are often demonstrated at election time when people go to their front doors to ascertain the nature of the noise only to find the loud speaker vehicle has disappeared and are only able to catch snatches of what is now being broadcast elsewhere. Attracting people to open their front doors is possibly not the most sensible thing to do when you are encouraging them to go inside and close their windows to protect them against a release of dangerous chemicals.

Business/commercial population
Emergencies do not just affect the residential population. Chemical sites are often located next to other industrial or commercial premises, a number being sited near to large out of town shopping complexes.

Some of these may have their own on-site public address systems but there needs to be a process of alerting the site management to the problem. Whilst out of town shopping complexes may have internal public address or voice evacuation systems, they rarely have effective external communications within their large car parking areas.

Sites falling within the COMAH top tier requirements for the production of an off-site emergency plan have a requirement to plan to deal with these issues. This is not the case for industrial or commercial sites that may be affected by a transport incident and which, for ease of access purposes, are often located near to major road networks.

3.5 Silent hours
Communicating with the population during the late evening, overnight and early morning periods when most people are sleeping is a difficult problem to resolve. TV and radio are not suitable media for this and the time taken to make door to door visits or individual telephone calls may preclude these options in many urgent situations.

This may be less of a problem if the solution is to keep people indoors. However, where there is a need to evacuate or a problem with water contamination requiring people to be informed either to boil or not to drink the water, there are no easy options.

Using the Royal Mail (as outlined in Appendix E [PDF 75KB]) is one option but not everyone looks at their post first thing before making a cup of tea etc., particularly if it looks like a form of junk mail. However, the Environment Agency's direct mail campaign using red waterproof plastic cards with warning codes printed on was a deliberate attempt to avoid this being regarded as junk mail - feedback suggests his has worked.

There is no national telephone system to make a vast number of simultaneous calls.

Transport or Site based incidents
Mention has already been made in 3.4 above of one of the problems associated with the difference between transportation and site-based incidents. Where there is a known problem such as at top-tier COMAH sites there is an off-site plan, which indicates how the public is to be warned. Information on this is distributed to residents within the public information zone to produce a general awareness of what actions to take on hearing a particular warning sound or message.

Some incidents (such as the one at Nup End outlined in paragraph 7 of Appendix A [PDF 107KB]) take place at sites that have not been designated as hazardous and therefore there is no general awareness of the risk. This is particularly the case with fires where the burning contents and/or fabric of the building mix together to produce toxic fumes.

Accidents involving the transportation of dangerous substances can take place practically everywhere and it may well be that the affected public have no, or little, awareness of the risk. Nor are there special arrangements in place as may be the case with COMAH sites.

Areas of perceived low risk
There are other factors that may provide a perception of low risk making it difficult to develop public awareness of what to do during particular types of emergencies. For example, the Environment Agency have made vast improvements in their ability to residents of properties at high risk of flooding and have been greatly assisted by the media in the issue of regular flood warning code messages.

However, providing timely warnings to residents in lower risk properties remains a challenge with the danger of a developing perception that those properties not approached for inclusion on their "at risk" database are not at risk.

There is no national culture of awareness amongst the public of how to respond to large-scale emergencies.

Developing technologies
The above paragraphs concentrate on some of the problems. Modern technology can provide solutions to these problems, particularly in the field of media and telecommunications.

Some solutions have high cost implications and industry is not actively encouraged to develop applications of this technology aimed at alerting public to emergencies. If these were to be considered at the development stage the cost implications may not be as high.

Solutions considered by the NSC include:

• The use of the public telephone network to make large numbers of simultaneous telephone calls - generally referred to as Public Warning " Information by Telephone (PWIT).

• Utilising the cell-wide broadcast feature available on modern cellular telephone systems to broadcast a text message to all telephones within a given cell area.

• Implementation of the emergency code within the RDS systems currently installed in most new motor vehicles.

• Developing the use of digital broadcasting technology to selectively address warning messages to viewers/listeners

These and other technical solutions were referred to the New Technology Group. The current position and the group's preferred options for initial further consideration are outlined in section 6 of this report.

Increasing public concern
The public, not surprisingly, adopt the view that every possible action should be taken to warn and advise them during emergencies. We live in an increasingly litigious society and we should not be surprised if there is a move towards individuals suing emergency agencies for their inability to alert them to emergencies.

This increasing public concern is reflected in media coverage of incidents. Paragraph 3 of Appendix A [PDF 107KB] details refers to the Royston Gas Incident. Ten years on from the incident it received headline coverage in local newspapers suggesting that little had changed in the last decade to improve methods of communicating with the public.

Lack of clear statutory responsibilities
There is evidence to suggest that where responsibilities for warning the public are clear there is a significant improvement in the arrangements for warning the public. A good example of this is the identification of the Environment Agency as being the responsible agency for the provision of flood warnings.

Doubts over the potential liability of responding agencies have acted as a deterrent against them becoming involved in warning the public. Consequently, the Association of Chief Police Officer's current policy is to advise against police forces voluntarily taking on a responsibility to warn the public.

It should be noted that, in areas where there are high concentrations of top-tier COMAH sites, the police usually choose to remain in the communication chain. They expect the operator to keep them informed and they will relay the information to the public, usually via local radio.