Inside the council’s emergency control room

A select number of staff have undergone hundreds, maybe thousands, of training hours to prepare them for what to expect when they are inside.

But if they are standing in front of the flat-screen monitors dealing with a real-life situation it means there is a looming threat to residents’ safety or even lives are at risk.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service has been granted rare access to the facility to gain an insight into how the authority responds to major incidents.

From the Boxing Day floods in 2015 to when part of the town was on lockdown in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing, the borough’s civil response efforts have been coordinated from this room.

In filing cabinets near to the security door are files detailing protocols for every imaginable emergency scenario in case there is a loss of power and computer systems are down.

On one desk is a red phone – reminiscent of the caped crusader’s bat-phone- that provides a direct link to Cobra, the UK government’s emergency committee, as it did during the Boxing Day floods in 2015.

The various screens on the wall can be linked into feeds- via the council’s central watch CCTV system- from more than 1,000 cameras across the borough.

And, of course, there is a visible stash of what is always needed in any unfolding crisis; tea bags and coffee.

Responsibility for the council’s response to major incidents is Professor Kate Ardern, who balances her role as chief emergency planning officer with being the town hall’s director of public health.

Part of her job, she explains, is to prepare for the "worst case scenario".

“I’m paid to think the unthinkable, in many respects, plan for it and make sure we’re ready for it.

“Major incident planning requires team-work not just across the council, all the planning we do is across a variety of agencies from ambulance, police, NHS colleagues, Highways England, Environment Agency, or counter terrorism bosses. It’s a broad range.

“We plan for everything from disease outbreaks to counter-terrorism through to winter planning or the impact of severe weather.”

The way in which an emergency situation plays out is unfortunately all too familiar for senior council officers in recent years.

Along with the 2015 floods, and the days following the Manchester Arena terror attack, there have been further incidents of flash flooding and the Wharfside fire that saw more than 100 flats evacuated.

On a smaller scale, an incident that nevertheless required a significant civil response occurred in June when a building in Tyldesley was evacuated after it was found to be under threat of collapse.

The council has a rota of senior staff who are on-call as either forward incident officers (FIO) or senior duty officers (SDO).

The usual scenario would be the emergency services contacting the council’s central watch team who in turn alert the on-call FIO, who would make their way to the scene to be the ‘eyes and ears’ of the local authority.

The SDO would then be advised to make their way to the control room to start liaising with the emergency services, partner agencies, political leadership and communications team, who can convey urgent messages to the public.

It is their responsibility to make decisions on deploying council resources, whether that is personnel, such as specialist officers, or equipment and vehicles, depending on the unfolding emergency.

During Storm Eva, Prof Ardern recalls, officers had been informed that rising flood water had compromised an electricity sub-station in Rochdale.

“We were able to deploy a high-volume pump to help protect a similar sub-station in Platt Bridge. If we hadn’t, more than 1,000 homes would have been left without power. We were able to make a quick decision on that and it’s a good example of the challenging decisions an SDO would face.”

There may also be scenarios when the council becomes the lead agency if blue light services are otherwise engaged, says Andrew Sharrock, civil contingency and health protection manager.

He explains: “On Boxing Day 2015, we got to midday and GMFRS said unless the incident is a direct threat to life, they were stopping responding to calls about flooding because they had to prioritise fighting fires and saving lives.

“Pumping somebody’s house out, yes, they can assist, but their resources were not going to cope.

“The SDO had to take that on-board to alter how we were responding. And later on that day there was a six pump fire in Leigh. Everyone had to work together to prioritise where resources can go.”

The council’s role – unlike the emergency services – can continue far beyond the days of the major incident itself.

It can often be a logistical operation of military proportions, says Prof Ardern.

In the case of the Wharfside fire, residents evacuated from their flats were booked into hotels or guesthouses.

For weeks afterwards the town hall was working with the fire service to reunite them with vital belongings; ranging from irreplaceable coursework for a university degree or passports for impending holidays.

Officers also worked alongside health service counterparts to arrange for medication that was lost in the fire to be re-issued as soon as possible.

When a section of residential streets off Wigan Lane were on lockdown in the days after the Manchester Arena attack, arrangements were being made to accommodate those affected if the cordon was not lifted overnight.

“All I can say is, you try ringing around trying to organise hundreds of rooms. It’s quite a task,” says Mr Sharrock.

“At Wharfside, none of those residents had to sleep on makeshift beds in church halls, we found them all hotels or guest-houses.”

“They’re the bits that people wouldn’t necessarily see as the council’s role but it’s the bit of the job that those affected most appreciate,” adds Prof Ardern.

“The fact is that if you’re in that situation, you feel bewildered and lost and somebody saying ‘it’s okay, we’ve sorted it for you’, it just helps them start the process of recovery.”

The unseen aspects of the civil response to emergencies brings us back to the cabinet in the control room that holds those paper files.

Because one such document outlines the evacuation protocol for buildings that may house animals and pets.

“When you are evacuating a building, one of the reasons someone might not want to leave their homes is because they don’t want to leave their pet behind so we have a protocol- created with help from colleagues across GM and the RSPCA- to help rescue pets as well, because we know how important they are,” Prof Ardern says.

“So we factor in dogs and cats- and other pets- into our planning. It’s thinking about the human consequences of an incident.”

For weeks after the Tyldesley building was evacuated, the council was supporting those affected with transport costs or clothing, the officers explain.

The council’s protocols are constantly being updated and lessons are learned from each incident.

As a direct result of the 2015 floods- when officers struggled to shift resources across east to west extremities of the borough- an extra high volume pump has been acquired to increase coverage.

Prof Ardern said: “We’ve always found whenever there is an incident, staff here are queuing up to help, their dedication is amazing.

“One of our social care officers whose house was flooded during Storm Eva rang up and wanted to help our response because she said ‘there’s nothing I can do about my house, but I want to help others.’

“That’s the true spirit of public service; colleagues going above and beyond.”