Scottish Government Resilience Communicating from 'the bunker
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This document discusses communication strategies for responding to disasters and crises in Scotland. It outlines the Scottish Government's role in providing leadership, reassurance, and support during national emergencies. Examples of past incidents are given, such as Lockerbie, Piper Alpha, and Dunblane. The challenges of communicating during weather events like snow, wind, and flooding are examined. The Scottish Government Resilience team is tasked with strategic direction, coordination, advising ministers, ensuring communication between organizations, and issuing public information and advice.
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Scottish Government Resilience Communicating from 'the bunker
- 1. Scottish Government Resilience: Communicating from ‘the bunker’ Andrew Slorance – Resilience Communications Manager
- 2. Disasters and Tragedies • Lockerbie • Braer • Glasgow • Piper Alpha • Dunblane
- 4. Communication in a crisis • Warning, informing & reassuring the public • Instant communications & 24 hour media • Response and consequence phases • Local and national roles & messages • Training and exercising • Joint working is vital
- 6. Weather ‘events’ case study – snow & ice • Weather forecasts (regular Met Office updates) • Transport disruption – rail, road and air • Fuel distribution (panic buying) • Food supplies (more panic buying – or not?) • Power cuts (what happens if widespread outage?) • Heating oil and gas supplies (rural areas) • Frozen pipes • Flooding
- 7. Weather events case study – wind • Weather forecasts (bulk get info from TV) • Warning the public (wind not as visible) • Travel advice (revised ACPOS guidance) • School closures (we advised, councils decide) • Workplace advice (what would you do?) • Tree disruption – transport and power
- 8. Key Scottish Government role • Leadership in national emergencies • Helping secure best possible outcomes • Reassure and inform the public • Add value and support responders http://www.readyscotland.org/ready-government/preparing-scotland/
- 9. What does SGoRR do? • Sets strategic direction for national response • Co-ords & supports activity of SG directorates • Collates info and advises Ministers • Ensures effective comms between all players • Supports allocation of scarce national resources • Issues national advice and info to the public • Liaises with UK Government (where relevant)
- 10. Risk Assessment – planning ahead
- 11. For further info, please do not hesitate to contact me: Andrew Slorance, SG Resilience Comms andrew.slorance@scotland.gsi.gov.uk Tel: 0131 244 0099 Mob: 07771 943328
Editor's Notes
- Disaster and tragedies happen – and in Scotland we have fairly recent and painful experience of huge events that have cast a global spotlight on our small nation. Within the past 20 or so years we’ve had Lockerbie, the Braer oil disaster, the Glasgow airport bombing, Piper Alpha and, of course, the Dunblane tragedy. We’ve also been heavily affected by things like the Chernobyl accident and by the foot and mouth outbreak. So major national events with international implications do happen on our soil.
- But it’s not just the major Scottish-based incidents that see SGoRR activated. In recent years we’ve also seen a lot of activity around Swine Flu, the Icelandic ash clouds, the Libyan uprising (Scottish oil workers), Fukishima, the English riots and, of course, weather. Snow, ice, floods, winds – we’ve had it all and in spades. Also started to play a co-ordinating role on known national events like Papal Visit, Olympic Torch Relay and Games themselves.
- So what do we look for from Comms. Members of the SG Comms team will be involved when SGoRR is active. Incident is handled by responders, but we can support in messaging about warning, informing and reassuring. Much more focus now on social media (Twitter and Facebook) and on feeding the 24 hour news media. Generally 2 phases – response and consequence. We put a lot of effort into thinking about the consequence element. Local responders best placed top deal with local comms. We can play a role (leading in some cases) at national level – Ministers will be expected to comment and may be making parly statements etc. In peace time, we do a lot around training and exercising. Joint work is vital.
- Here’s a quick example of the sort of partners we need to deal with if there’s bad weather.
- Weather has been a big focus of our work in SGoRR over the past 3 or 4 years. We had 2 successive winters of heavy snow; we had severe freezing temperatures; we’ve had plenty of flooding; and we’ve had hurricane force winds. Sometimes all at the same time! We have also had a drought which was starting to affect the whisky industry – but sadly the heatwaves haven’t hit us yet. I think that we’ve moved on massively in our comms and co-ordination around weather situations in recent years – through improving our handling during incidents and learning lessons afterwards. During two winters of significant snow and ice, the range of things that we’ve been involved with or helped influence is huge: Pre-2010 we had little or no contact with Met Office comms in Exeter. Now we are in constant contact, sharing info, issuing joint messages and working with a range of partners on improving our planning and warning work. Transport Scotland have developed the MART with key partners, where Comms is a critical function. They work closely with the transport operators and have made massive strides in communicating with the travelling public in a co-ordinated way and through many sources. Also agreed new travel advice with police. Fuel distribution – empty pumps and queues at the forecourts. Lot of contact to improve comms and avoid panic buying. Food supplies – broadcast shots of empty bread shelves. Not the case – arranged overnight a visit to Tesco distribution. Must keep on top of citizen journalism. Power cuts – still a lot of discussion about how to communicate during power cuts. Heating oil – big realisation that there’s a lot of rural Scotland still dependent on heating oil. Frozen pipes – a lot of local incidents. Keen to get website updated regularly. And to tell the positive stories. Flooding – SEPA contact
- Wind – last couple of years. Two bad ones – Dec 11 and start of Jan 12. Met Office changed their warnings – Red very rare – most people get from the TV. Important to get info out – not as visible as snow, ice or rain. Advice – work with police on messaging. School closures – big dilemma for councils and headteachers – late night advice. Good contact mechanisms. Workplace advice – business continuity. Who is essential? Trees – lots of them down on rail, road and power. READY FOR WINTER – advice around all of this.
- What’s SG’s specific role? Set out in Preparing Scotland (guidance all on line – used to be huge dusty manuals but not now)
- What does SGoRR actually do? Where national or across SCG boundaries – sets or helps set strategic direction for response Co-ords across directorates Big info collection Brings external partners together Can help allocate resources – specialist equipment; staff; etc Issues advice and info Liaises UK Govt - COBRA
- Looking ahead. Can’t really predict disasters, but planning means though we can’t be ready for everything, we can be ready for anything. A lot of work at UK and Scottish level (down to local areas) analysing risk and preparing accordingly. This chart is published in the UK national risk register. Top right corner is the danger area – pretty much applies to Scotland as week apart from severe coastal flooding. Pan flu Terror Weather CNI (utilities) Cyber attacks and space weather.