Author: John Kimball, Senior Emergency Planner, IEM
In the past month, two unrelated events caused me to consider the obvious and not-so-obvious causes and effects of consequences of disasters. The first of these is the air crash in Smolensk, Russia that took the lives of the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski and dozens of senior political, military, and religious leaders of the country. Among the senior figures lost included Poland’s entire military chiefs of staff, the head of national security, the head of the national bank, and eighteen members of parliament. In addition to the obvious violations of commonly accepted continuity of government/critical infrastructure protection practices of policy that put much of an organization’s irreplaceable leadership at risk, other sources have hinted at other failures to manage risk. One is that the high profile destination, a solemn remembrance of the Kaytn massacre and a significant event to the Polish people, may have caused the president to pressure the pilot into attempting to land in marginal weather conditions. As quoted in the Manchester Guardian, former Prime Minister Leszek Miller said, “The president had wanted so much to be there, the pilot knew this, so they accepted the risk and in the process lost everything. When people die, they are irreplaceable, but in this case, I really believe it is going to be hard to find people to take the places of these talented people[a1] .” The mention of “risk” captured the essence of this event. Far too much risk was accepted by placing so many senior officials on one flight, compounded by the possibility that the pilot attempted landing in unsafe conditions. Another aggravating factor mentioned has been a potential language issue between the Russian air controller and the Polish pilot as to the altitude information. Again, simple rules and procedures that were skirted resulted in the unspeakable, yet highly preventable national tragedy.
The other event, absolutely unpreventable and unpredictable, was caused by the eruption of the volcano in Iceland. The massive ash cloud disrupted air traffic for days causing billions of dollars in damages. Exact figures quoted by the International Air Transport Association are 100,000 flights cancelled with total loss to the world airlines at $1.7 billion. ($400 million per day!) The effect of lost revenue disrupted travel plans and will continue to filter down to the traveling public and businesses for weeks to come. A spin-off effect was the overload of trains, hotels, and car rental agencies in key European cities by people making alternative travel plans. As contingency planners and emergency managers, try to visualize a disruption to air traffic in the US and the resultant impact on our rail and motor vehicle traffic. While Europe has a robust intra- and intercity rail system that was able to absorb the spillover of re-route travels, what would the effect be here in the U.S.? As a resident of the North East corridor, I shudder to imagine that. One consequence of the flight path disruption was the re-routing of a military MEDIVAC flight from Afghanistan and Iraq. While no lives were directly jeopardized, such effects should be on the figurative radar screen of emergency planners. One news source quoted a disruption of an organ transplant surgery in Europe due to the flight disruption. One final thought for contingency planners: What if the volcano blesses the upcoming FIFA Soccer World Cup in South Africa with another eruption?
[a1] “Langauge barrier and a president determined to land-theories swirl over Polish air disaster” Kate Connolly, Manchester,
UK Guardian, April 12, 2010.