The need for joint communication in the field Case: The Enschede fireworks disaster Author: Hanno Steenbergen

1. The need for joint communication in the field Case: The Enschede fireworks disaster Author: Hanno Steenbergen ITO, The Netherlands (hanno.steenbergen@ito.nl) Emergency Telecommunications Workshop 26th – 27th February 2002, ETSI, Sophia Antipolis, France The author accepts that ETSI makes this submission publicly available on CD-ROM and on the EMTEL web-site.

2. Contents • Introduction • What went wrong in the communications • Recommendations by the authorities • Conclusions

3. Introduction • 13 May 2000 in Enschede (NL): SE FIREWORKS explodes • 22 People killed, including 4 firemen • Huge material damage • Questions raised about the action of the emergency services • This presentation: an overview of the findings with relation to the communication in the field based on official reports including that of the “Oosting” committee

4. What went wrong in the communications (1) • Control room people (general point of contact for emergency services during disasters) were overloaded • Lack of common mobile communication possibilities: everybody tried to contact the control rooms individually • Due to stress situation: control room people inclined to fall back to routine handling / less priority to information exchange with other disciplines • Poor interdisciplinary communication: lack of information and delayed information in the field

5. What went wrong in the communications (2) • Public telephone systems (fixed and mobile) were overloaded • Staff members unreachable • Military police used paging to call their people: proved to be very useful to them • Insufficient radio discipline • Interrupting a long conversation not possible • Mobile command unit of national police force arrived late • After arrival communications improved significantly, because of experienced people • Difference in jargon hindered inter-disciplinary communications

6. Recommendations by the authorities • Control rooms centre of information during scaling up • Control rooms of different disciplines must be co-located • Training of control room people must be adapted to emphasize interdisciplinary working • Uniformity in procedures and jargon • Speeding up of roll out of nation wide TETRA network for emergency services (C2000) • Multidisciplinary mobile command units must be installed, strategically spread over the Netherlands • The mobile command unit takes over the lead in communications to the field after deployment

7. Conclusions (1) • Essential requirements: • Control room oriented mobile communications • Group oriented mobile communications • Interdisciplinary mobile communications • Emergency call • Paging • Mobile command units take over the lead after scaling up • Required increase in capacity for mobile communications achieved via direct mode operation or temporary stand-alone systems

8. Conclusions (2) • Way of working during disasters must be the same as during daily use • Co-located control rooms • Same technology • During disasters public telephone networks (fixed and mobile) are overloaded: a high availability private mobile system is inevitable

9. C2000 delivers technology basis • TETRA for voice and data • Proprietary paging system