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Summer floods 2007: ‘Multiple’ response |
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In this personal account of the summer floods, Paul Hayden, Hereford and Worcester CFO and chair of CFOA’s Inland Water Strategy Group, describes the close response from the National Coordination Centre in West Yorkshire and CLG’s Emergency Information and Support Group. This multi-agency, multi-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional approach, he insists, underpinned much of his thinking throughout the period
NO ONE CAN FAIL TO HAVE BEEN moved by the pictures of complete devastation caused by flooding across the UK in June and July this year, or the many rescue scenes captured live on our TV screens. “Unprecedented” has been the most often used phrase to describe the floods, and whilst this is often an overused word, it was entirely appropriate in this instance. The rescue challenge and the response required from fire and rescue services has been equally unprecedented, both in terms of the scale of response required, and the systems put in place to manage it.
As FIRE pointed out last month, the Chief Fire Officers Association has been examining the issues posed by Major Flood Events for more than two years, publishing its report and recommendations in November 2006. Since that time, good progress has been made with multi-agency partners, various government departments and CFOA’s strategic and tactical inland water working groups. Although there is much more to do, the principles and multiagency relationships established in the past two years were to have a significant impact on our ability to protect the public when the summer floods came. As Chief Fire Officer of one of the services impacted by the floods, I saw first hand the issues and challenges faced by responders and communities alike. As Chair of the CFOA Inland Water Strategy Group (IWSG) and author of the CFOA flood report, I also had an opportunity to assess in practice the principles we had been advocating. This is a personal outline of events as they unfolded.
Part I: Prelude to Disaster
Herefordshire and Worcestershire is no stranger to major floods, and communities still talk of the devastating floods of 1947, 1963, 1998 and 2000. On Tuesday June 19, 2007 a concentrated storm 40 miles long but only 10 miles wide tracked across the two counties resulting in severe flash floods. Over 300 calls came in to the service in just over an hour, with reports of many people trapped. Front line crews were supported by specialist swiftwater rescue teams in carrying out numerous technical rescues. USAR crews were brought in to deal with properties brought to partial collapse by the power of the floodwater and an RAF SAR helicopter was used to check on isolated properties and vehicles washed away in a tight river valley inaccessible by road. Our crews worked throughout the night to rescue over 80 people from homes and vehicles. By the next morning the sun was shining and this looked like an “unprecedented” localised summer storm. It was of course just a small precursor of what was to come.
On Sunday June 24, 2007 a severe weather warning was issued by the Met Office with predictions of unusually intense rainfall. On Monday June 25 the rains started and this time it was areas of South Yorkshire, Humberside and Lincolnshire that suffered the brunt of this storm, initiating a massive rescue response from all agencies.
Multiple Response
National control and mobilisation of New Dimension assets, such as High Volume Pumps (HVPs) is already well structured and an operation quickly swung into place to support the impacted authorities. FRNCC in West Yorkshire quickly began to track and mobilise HVPs with central co-ordination carried out by CLG’s EISG team based in London. However, given that there is no statutory duty for FRS to carry out rescues in the inland water environment, there was no database of water rescue assets available and no common understanding about what constituted a “capable water rescue resource.” Regardless of the statutory position, once the scale of the rescue task became clear, requests for inland water rescue assets were passed to a number of services and voluntary agencies through local mutual aid arrangements.
In response to requests for assistance from his own service in Greater Manchester, Barry Dixon, as head of CFOA Operations, contacted me as Chair of IWSG to see how capable rescue assets could be identified from outside the immediate vicinity of the floods if the situation escalated. Given the seriousness of the situation, a decision was made to use the draft resource database held by CFOA IWSG to assist in identification of potential water rescue.
Although FRNCC has no direct remit to track and mobilise any non-ND assets, after consultation between Barry Dixon and West Yorkshire’s DCFO Simon Pilling, it was agreed that in the circumstances FRNCC would coordinate the mobilisation of specialist water rescue assets to meet mutual aid requests as advised by CFOA. This arrangement was quickly utilised in meeting a request from South Yorkshire for a further five specialist rescue teams with boats. Appropriate teams from around the country were identified using the CFOA database and mobilised by FRNCC. Rescue and relief operations continued throughout Tuesday June 26 with colleagues in South Yorkshire and Humberside doing an incredible job. Supported by specialist teams from across the UK, they rescued over 3,000 people from the rising flood waters, and used High Volume Pumps to great effect in removing flood water and helping to prevent further escalation at places such as the Ulley Reservoir near Rotherham.
Severe Weather
On Wednesday June 27 a further severe weather warning was issued by the Met Office indicating that there would be further extensive rain across the whole of the UK on Friday June 29. Although FRNCC and EISG were already doing a great job in managing ND assets, it was recognised that any further escalation of operations would require even greater co-ordination of water rescue assets. At this stage CFOA was contacted by the department for Communities and Local Government and asked to provide assistance with the identification and co-ordination of water rescue assets across the UK. Following discussions between Barry Dixon, myself and CLG, terms of reference were agreed as follows:
1. Produce temporary contingency arrangements to provide the UK FRS with water rescue capability in the event of further escalation of the flooding. These temporary arrangements will include a small number of generic water rescue resource ‘types’ that will be shared with all FRS and other organisations who can provide rescue resources. These descriptions of resources capabilities will be used to assist in both the mutual aid processes and operational pre-planning. Planning arrangements will include the water rescue capability availability from FRS, voluntary organisations and other competent agencies (including the military). The temporary arrangements will include a database of equipment and trained personnel together with availability and response times.
This database will be shared with NCC, which will action any subsequent requests for mutual aid. It will also include necessary practical details, such as contact and mobilisation arrangements and any service provider’s costs. 2. Establish a 24/7 liaison centre (National Flood Support Team) from 1200 on June 28. Provide a capability to provide strategic or tactical advice to individual FRS in relation to water rescue. The support team will also maintain a strategic overview of the actual and predicted weather and flood situation across the UK in order to provide further advice and guidance to EISG, NCC and government as necessary. The requirement to maintain the liaison centre will be reviewed at 0900 Monday July 2 and a decision taken on its continuation in liaison with CLG.
Concept of Operation
This arrangement is intended to provide temporary short-term support to the Service and government in the wake of current weather and flooding conditions. It will not replace existing command and communication structures or interfere with existing local arrangements for mutual aid. The National Flood Support Team (NFST) will work closely with both EISG and NCC. NCC will remain responsible for managing requests for mutual aid and strategic resource deployment.
EISG: Responsible for the co-ordination and direction of New Dimension assets and maintaining a strategic overview of the flooding emergency. FRNCC: Responsible for the mobilisation of New Dimension assets and to assist with the mobilisation of water rescue assets identified by the National Flood Support Team (NFST). NFST: Responsible for identifying water rescue assets and undertaking liaison with FRNCC and ESIG.
Flood Support Team in Operation
The CFOA Flood Support Team was established in the Command Suite at Hereford and Worcester FRS HQ, directed by myself, with Hereford and Worcester Area Managers Paul Amos and Martin Blunden. Both have extensive water rescue experience. Paul is Chair of CFOA Inland Water Tactical Group, and Martin was formerly the water capability manager of the new dimension programme.
Also joining the team were Martin Bills a former advisor to the New Dimension water capabilities project and a member of Nottinghamshire FRS, and Terry Webb from Essex FRS, currently seconded to the New Dimension project. Multi-agency support was provided by Environment Agency’s Colin Berghouse, National Flooding Capabilities Manager, and Malcolm Weatherall and Arwyn Harris from the Met Office. Further administrative and general support was provided by Hereford and Worcester staff. This multi-agency and multi-disciplinary team enabled many of the principles outlined in the CFOA Management of Major Flood Emergencies report to be put into practice. In particular:
• Bringing together FRS officers, weather and environmental specialists in order to form a strategic picture of both the current and predicted situation on the ground. This predictive risk picture was then used to inform deployment decisions.
• Establishment of a resource database that identified specialist water rescue assets, from both FRS and voluntary agencies, classified by their capabilities.
• Making predictive mobilisations ahead of the storm to ensure that impacted areas would have access to specialist rescue teams when required.
Clarity of Command
Given the potential for confusion, one of the key issues recognised by the flood support team from the outset was the importance of ensuring clarity in command, control and mobilising arrangements. The agreed terms of reference circulated to all services were intended to ensure this, by making clear that temporary support arrangements were just that, not a replacement for normal Gold, Silver and Bronze command systems. Whilst the flood support team could assist with provision of specialist rescue teams or advice on request, they could not, and did not, interfere with the direction of operations at a service level. Equally, once a specialist rescue team was allocated to a service they came under their supervision and direction. The flood support teams work was based on two key elements; maintenance of accurate and timely intelligence and an asset register of declared rescue resources from around the country including non-FRS teams. From this we were able to meet mutual aid requests and maintain strategic cover of specialist water rescue teams based on actual and predicted risk. Intelligence was provided by our colleagues from the Met Office and the Environment Agency embedded in the support team. This enabled us to use both rainfall data and river level predictions to estimate the likely impact of incoming weather systems. This was put together with field reports on rescue and pumping activity to provide an accurate picture of what was happening on the ground. Good communication and information sharing between FST, FRNCC and EISG enabled us to come to a single consensus on the emerging picture and issue all fire and rescue services with regular updates, forecasts and intelligence.
In establishing a national asset register from scratch at a few hours’ notice we were not able to utilise the ‘Team Typing’ and accreditation system previously proposed by CFOA IWSG. In the circumstances, a simpler classification system based on team typing principles was used, and fire and rescue services were given details of the skills and capabilities we were looking for and asked to self declare the resources they had against the criterion we had set. It is a credit to chief fire officer colleagues all across the UK that we quickly had returns from most UK FRS, enabling us to build a register of 44 FRS teams available for deployment. Swiftwater rescue teams from voluntary agencies were only placed on the register where we were confident of their capabilities against the criterion we had set. Given the extensive multi-agency work we had done in this area over the past two years, this task was less onerous than it may have appeared, and we were glad to have tremendous support from organisations such as the RNLI, RAPID UK, Severn Area Rescue Association (SARA) and many other specialist voluntary groups. These teams were to make a fantastic contribution working alongside all of the other rescue agencies involved. Over the coming days the Flood Support Team maintained an overview of the weather, risk and resource position 24/7, made recommendations on mutual aid and predictive deployments, and in conjunction with colleagues in EISG and FRNCC, issued services with updates and guidance on issues as diverse as health and safety and community messages. Of course we only played a very small part in the overall response to the incidents, the brunt of the work being shouldered by colleagues “at the sharp end” in South Yorkshire and Humberside, but we were glad to make what contribution we could in ensuring best use of water rescue assets. In line with our temporary terms of reference, the team closed down on Monday July 2. We carried out a ‘hot debrief’ before disbanding, identifying a number of learning points to put into the national debate. Our overall view was that whilst we could have done an even better job had all of the systems and protocols we developed been agreed and practiced in advance, the principles we had established were definitely worthy of further consideration. The various members of the Flood Support Team returned wearily to their day jobs safe in the knowledge that we had just witnessed an event that only comes around once every few hundred years – how wrong we were!
Part II: Full Scale Catastrophe
On Thursday July 19, a severe weather warning was issued for the Midlands, including our own patch in Hereford and Worcester. Of particular concern was the comment from colleagues at the Met Office that the storm pattern looked very similar to that which had devastated South Yorkshire and Humberside just a few weeks previously. In view of the risk, the National Flood Support Team was re-established at Hereford and Worcester HQ, where the service command suite was also reactivated by DCFO Lucy Phillips. A range of measures were taken to ensure operational readiness ahead of the storm. Despite these preparations, the ferocity of the storm that hit us on Friday July 20 would stretch us to the limit.
To give just one example of the operational challenges we faced, the small Worcestershire village of Sedgeberrow was completely inundated by flash flooding that trapped many people in their homes and vehicles. Amongst the harrowing calls dealt with by Fire Control was the example of a mother who had been forced to swim up the stairs of her home with her children and was now trapped by floodwater, and a 70 year old man standing on the kitchen cabinets in his bungalow with floodwater up to his neck and rising. The rescue operation in this one small village alone involved six swiftwater rescue teams and an RAF SAR helicopter. In all, over 80 people were rescued in operations lasting over three hours.
This situation was soon repeated in other communities across Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire overnight, and as the picture developed during Saturday it became clear that this was a major flood event affecting three UK regions: West Midlands, South West and South East England. With communities at risk over such a wide area, the Flood Support Team made decisions to bring additional resources in from outside those affected regions in order to maintain strategic cover. In anticipation of the predicted rainfall pattern and mindful of the extent of the potential flood, it was decided to mobilise non-fire teams into Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service. The team from the RNLI’s Rapid Response Unit arrived at Droitwich Fire Station in the early hours of Saturday morning and immediately began rescue work in the eastern part of Worcestershire. As the picture developed it became clear where the worst weather would fall.
Danger Downstream
Following a further request for assistance from H&WFRS, teams from Buckinghamshire, Mid and West Wales, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Merseyside joined the RNLI, SARA and three H&WFRS water rescue teams in a full scale rescue effort across Herefordshire and Worcestershire. These teams were ably supported by airborne SAR mobilised via the RAF Aeronautical Rescue Co-ordination Centre (ARCC) Kinloss in Scotland. The number of people eventually rescued in Hereford and Worcester by swiftwater rescue teams eventually rose to 1,185, with many more rescued by RAF SAR helicopters.
At around midnight requests for assistance were received from Oxfordshire due to severe flooding on the River Cherwell. The team from GMC was redeployed from Worcestershire alongside a specialist unit from Essex FRS; they were joined later by a team from the RSPCA. These crews continued to operate in these areas until well into the Monday 23rd. In anticipation of downstream flooding on the River Thames, Berkshire FRS requested additional resources on standby. However, when this request was received weather reports indicated an additional and separate rainfall event with the potential to affect the South Coast and South East England. The NFST took the decision to advise FRSNCC to leave in situ FRS resources in the South and to mobilise teams from Merseyside and Lincolnshire. As the flood levels rose downstream of Worcester the focus was on Gloucestershire. At Tewkesbury, the confluence of the Avon and Severn, rivers swollen by record flood levels began to have a dramatic effect. Given reports from the ground and the available intelligence, a request from Gloucestershire FRS for additional assistance resulted in the RNLI and SARA being redeployed from Hereford and Worcester. Additional teams were mobilised from Wiltshire, Avon, Mid and West Wales and RAPID UK. Rescue operations continued for several days.
Specialist SupportAlthough in Hereford and Worcester we would like to think we have a great deal of ‘in house’ expertise when it comes to inland water operations, we have been advocating for a long time the value of impacted authorities bringing in additional sector competent experts to provide specialist support, leaving local officers to deal with the immediate situation. We were not too proud to follow our own advice on this occasion, and could not have wished for more professional assistance from a team of tactical advisors from Nottinghamshire FRS. This group of officers with specialist skills provided a boat command unit that operated for 48 hours, providing much needed support for the external resources operating in and around Evesham and later at Upton upon Severn. This is a new tactic arising from lessons learned from previous floods and one that proved very effective. With teams being maintained by their base organisations on a rolling basis, we ensured a high degree of resilience during the testing emergency phase of the flood.
Further local considerations at this time included searches for the many holiday makers who were staying in riverside mobile homes or river barges, and maintaining strategic fire cover for communities with many of the two counties roads cut off by floodwater and landslip. Receipt of mutual aid resources was made difficult due to road conditions and even the M50 was closed for several hours by floodwater, and the M5 motorway became impassable leaving hundreds of motorists stranded overnight.
Final Word
This is a personal account of the summer 2007 floods. Other colleagues up and down the country could tell similar tales and faced similar or even greater challenges. I have described the contribution made by the CFOA Flood Support Team because I was responsible for its operation, but fully acknowledge that we could have achieved nothing without the support of CFOA colleagues such as Barry Dixon, and the similar endeavours of the National Coordination Centre in West Yorkshire and the Department for Communities and Local Government’s Emergency Information and Support Group. Equally, the descriptions I have given of rescue operations in my own service area are only examples of the events also seen in Humberside, South Yorkshire, Gloucestershire or many other places. These events will obviously initiate a major review into the lessons learnt, although it is too soon to suggest what these may be. From a personal perspective, I have reflected on the key lessons I had taken from research into major flood events carried out in support of last year’s CFOA Flood Management report. A key issue US colleagues emphasised was that “protecting communities from flooding requires a multi-agency, multi-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional approach.” This lesson had underpinned much of my thinking, and hence the CFOA strategy, to date.
Having now experienced events first hand, I am more convinced than ever that this basic premise is as true here in the UK as it is in the US. Multi-agency because these events inevitably involve everyone from central and local government departments, the blue light services, MoD and the voluntary sector. In my own area, fantastic assistance came from sources as diverse the SAS and RSPCA! Multi-disciplinary, because responding to the resulting challenges, even for a single agency such as FRS, requires skills as diverse as swiftwater rescue, high volume pumping, command and control, community safety, asset tracking and logistical co-ordination. Add in the knowledge and skills of our partners, from environmental health officers to Trading Standards staff on the lookout for rogue builders in the clear up phase, and you get an idea of just how diverse these incidents can become. Multi-jurisdictional because water does not respect individual authority or regional boundaries, and different levels of response to different parts of the same flood event would rightly be seen as unacceptable. I would suggest that supporting a sustained and professional response to incidents that simultaneously impact several government regions, let alone several individual FRS, requires new thinking to deliver appropriate support and co-ordination of mutual aid, again an issue raised in last years CFOA report. As local and national debriefs get underway, I hope that both colleagues and partners will also recognise these three realities and accept them as the starting point for their future deliberations.
There is no question that we will be impacted by major flooding events again in the future, and now is the time for mature debate about how we can improve the safety of our communities and responders, rather than about who could, or should, have done what in the past. The hard work, commitment and professionalism of FRS staff have rightly been recognised by Members of Parliament, our partners and communities. Whilst we are committed to learning from this event and striving to do even better in the future, there is no doubt that a great many lives were saved by our collective response to what has been an unprecedented flooding incident across the whole country. |
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