Services look at response times after bank crisis (From Gazette Series)

Services look at response times after bank crisis

THE lessons learned from the full-scale civil emergency sparked by the loss of all telecommunications in Wotton-under-Edge earlier this month have generated county-wide interest.

While most local authorities and all the emergency services have detailed plans of what to do in a large-scale civil emergency such as that in Wotton on November 3, opportunities to put them into practice are rare.

Now the three emergency services involved after raiders bungled a raid on the cash machine at Lloyds Bank in Long Street, Wotton, plus BT and Gloucestershire County Council are all keen to look at how well their emergency plans actually worked.

Wotton was almost totally cut off from the outside world when the bank raiders cut the telephone lines not only to Wotton but also surrounding communities such as Hillesley and Charfield.

Mobile telephone networks were also affected with the exception of Orange. At around 10pm on Wednesday, November 2, Wotton town clerk Glenys Sykes was one of the first people in the town to realise the telephones were down but, as she told the town council on Monday, the fire service was already on standby and remained so for the next 48 hours.

BT was the next to arrive and had set up a full-scale control room with a satellite dish by midnight. Engineers then worked round the clock until all 5,000 or so households affected were reconnected in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The police station was manned throughout Thursday night but not by local officers, which led to some difficulties, and an ambulance was placed on stand-by in the town.

The events of the two days were detailed by Mrs Sykes at the meeting this week. Members felt that two important lessons learned had been that as only half the town could receive BBC Radio Gloucestershire it was important that BBC Radio Bristol be informed on any future occasion.

It was also felt that a suggestion made by a member of the public, that old-fashioned loud hailers broadcasting information from a vehicle should be available, should be investigated.

Generally, however, members felt that contingency plans had worked well and that BT in particular had performed superbly.

The council is to write to BT thanking the company for its efforts, which included the issue of Orange mobile phones to key workers such as doctors and district nurses.

Cllr Paul Smith said: "I think they did a wonderful job. They were so well organised, they were brilliant."

Local television stations were described as irresponsible for broadcasting the fact that alarm systems had been disabled in the emergency

Chairman Cllr Elizabeth Warren thanked Mrs Sykes for her part in the emergency and said that if the council were given the chance to participate in debriefings then it would do so.