Have you tested the effectiveness of your crisis management plan without any lines of communication place - no phone, no email, no internet? How prepared would your organisation be in an emergency without any lines of communication…
This year marks the 40-year anniversary of the Bhopal disaster at an Indian pesticide plant. Labelled as the world’s greatest industrial disaster, in which 500,000 people in the city of Bhopal were exposed to a highly toxic gas, methyl isocynante (MIC), causing the immediate death of 3,787 people and another 16,000 in the weeks and years after, as well as 558,125 injuries.
Over the summer break, while scrolling through Netflix I stumbled across “The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984” – spoiler alert, this documentary does not deeply review the cause of the workplace incident. The four-episode miniseries focuses on the railway workers who tried to save many lives during the night and following day while the gas was leaking across the city.
On the night of 2 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant, due to malfunctioning equipment and untrained workers, a highly toxic gas Methyl isocyanate (MIC) leaked into the atmosphere, instantly killing many workers. As the gas started spreading into the highly populated city of Bhopal, masses of people begin to collapse in the streets, many of whom die. At Bhopal Junction train station, railway workers are initially confused by the chaos. They soon realise that people who were indoors were seemingly unharmed. They try to gather the crowds of people on the train plaforms into the station waiting room. Due to incomplete cable repair work that was taking place at the train station at the same time of the gas leak, communication systems (phonelines) are down. With communication systems down, the railway workers had no way to contact nearby stations to notify them about the unfolding situation. Unable to warn these stations, a train with over 1,000 passengers makes its way towards Bhopal Junction. Upon arrival, many of the passengers disembark the train, to their death on the station platform. If communication lines were in place, or a backup communication plan was available many lives would have been saved that night.
Fast forward 40 years, two weeks before the mini-series was released on Netflix, at around 4.05am on Wednesday November 8 2023, Optus (one of Australia’s largest telecommunication providers) suffered a nationwide unplanned network outage of both phone and internet, lasting over 12 hours. As a result of this outage over 2,697 calls to 000 (emergency services) failed during the outage. For those of you doing the math’s, that is 3.74 calls to emergency each minute or 224 calls per hour, that could not connect due to communication lines being down. It is unclear, if people who experienced these failed attempts found alternative ways to connect with emergency services.
Over the past 40 years there has been significant advancements in workplace health and safety, however there are still similarities been Bhopal and Optus - without lines of communication during an emergency there is a great risk and impact to lives. Watching The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984, and reflecting on the Optus outage, it prompted my thinking. If a serious or critical incident were to happen in the workplace today, tomorrow or in the future, what would be the flow on effect if all lines of communications were down, and how can workplaces prepare for this:
· Does your organization simulate critical incidents without any communication lines in place?
· Is there a back up plan on how to communicate if phone lines and internet are down?
· Is there instruction and guidance on this?
· Would frontline leaders and operatives know what to do?
· What controls and communications lines does your organization have in place for lone and remote workers.
Next time, the crisis management plan and emergency management plans are being reviewed and tested, consider Bhopal and Optus, and think about the role that communication mediums and tools play in your emergency response. How would an emergency scenario unfold without any communication lines, what is your organisations emergency preparedness for this. This would be a great one for the virtual reality simulation, with a blend of choose your own adventure responses. As an output, review the systems in place and the design of them to allow for contingency. As Michael Peach said at a conference presentation I attend years ago, where he discussed the emergency rescue efforts in response to the Thailand tsunami. “Hope is not a plan”.