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Dealing with disaster

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Changing climate, rising seas, drought and storms are all blamed for devastating floods.

Of all natural threats to our existence, it is widespread flooding that is currently causing the experts most concern. And their findings are posing an important question: should the security industry be asked to play a more active role when large areas of a country are under water?

Poorly targeted assistance

In the UK, the Audit Commission report on the 2007 floods found that, while government quickly made additional resources available, on the whole the assistance was poorly targeted and unlikely to provide value for money. It concluded that the government needed to provide more certainty about funding for future emergencies which were inevitable nationally, but impossible to predict geographically.

Floods were high on the agenda of the Public Service Events’ Civil Protection 07 conference, held in London in December. Government security adviser Patrick Mercer opened the conference with a warning to politicians and professionals to “get real over dealing with disaster”.

G4S in the UK is a leading voice in the debate about increasing the role of the private security industry in planning and responding to natural and man-made emergencies.

The private sector: untapped capability

Tristan Forster, managing director of G4S Gurkha Services, told the conference he believed the private sector also had untapped capability that could assist in such events.

He reminded the delegates that security officers were an integral part of the City of London’s Project Griffin – an anti-terrorism initiative with the security industry aimed at increasing awareness of terrorist risks and involving them in emergency continuity planning with the emergency services.

David Taylor-Smith, CEO of G4S Security Services (UK & Ireland), has already given his views on protecting critical national infrastructure (CNI) and has been active in discussions with key government figures to discuss the role of the private sector.

Speaking at the recent International Security National Resilience conference in London, he said "Traditionally, the UK has relied on its emergency services and the armed forces to work together to restore normal conditions after flooding and other large-scale events that impact CNI.

“While this has worked in the past, last summer’s floods revealed a new reality for the UK. With the military heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan and the emergency services stretched by counter terrorist priorities, the UK faced a considerable challenge trying to cope.”

Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, spoke of his concerns that commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan had left too few soldiers to cope with unexpected events at home. Similarly, fire and rescue crews were drawn from across the country in the battle to bail out flooded towns across Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Yorkshire.

Involving the private sector in response to emergencies

A new approach is needed to provide the surge of skilled people and specialist equipment to supplement the efforts of the emergency and armed services.

David Taylor-Smith adds, “The private sector has much to offer in this area and for years has played a key role, at both an official and unofficial or philanthropic level, in helping communities struck by natural and man-made disasters to recover.

“This is certainly G4S’s experience of working in more than 110 countries. We contributed to the US Government efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and evacuated individuals from Lebanon in the 2006 Israel/Lebanon border conflict.

“G4S has also established a business consisting mainly of recently retired British Army personnel to assist the British military with its training commitments for Iraq and Afghanistan and to provide specialist disaster management skills to businesses and to the UK Government.

“And we run G4S Police Recruit which maintains an active database of over 10,000 individuals. This provides every police force in the UK with temporary to permanent officers with specialist policing skills, freeing up resources for front-line policing at periods of high demand, such as during floods.

“In effect, this business provides the UK with a cost efficient national police reserve which can be called upon when police forces are stretched.”

Greater involvement under the leadership and co-ordination of the police, fire and medical services can only help support flood management efforts.

Faced with the effects of global warming, nations throughout the world will need as much help as they can get. And the sooner the better.
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This page is an edited version of the article featured in the March 2008 edition of International.
Download the full article: application/pdf Dealing with disaster
Canoes in floodwaters
In many nations, flooding has not previously been experienced on such a scale.

A report published in 2003 revealed that over one million square miles in Europe had been affected by floods during the five previous years.

The potential for flooding in the UK is now said to be as great a threat as terrorism or an influenza pandemic.

That’s not the view of an ill-informed alarmist, but the considered opinion of Sir Michael Pitt, appointed by the UK government to head an independent review of the flooding that devastated much of the country in 2007.

In his interim report, published in December 2007, he makes 87 recommendations and 15 urgent proposals to help Britain cope with future flooding which, he says, is inevitable. The 2007 floods were a “wake-up call”, he argues, and “flood risk management should be right up there” with the fight against terrorism or preventative measures against a pandemic.

Patrick McCully, executive director of the International Rivers Network says that floods are the most destructive, frequent and costly natural disasters – and they are getting worse. In 2007, he points out, 14 African countries have experienced their worst floods in decades.

His advice is that we all must learn to live with the increased frequency of such events and manage them as best we can.