terror drill at hackney marshes 8th june

[Frazzel]

Spooky or what!
From bbc see hear website:

On Friday 8 June, 2007-06-15
London's Hackney Council tested their emergency procedures by staging Operation Springclean - a simulated chemical attack on Hackney Marshes. Its purpose was to give the emergency services practice in decontaminating a large group of members of the public, and to find out if the procedures they had developed in theory would work in practice.
What better way to calculate my own chances of survival in a terrorist attack?
And so I find myself standing on Hackney Marshes on a damp spring morning with a few dozen other volunteers, cordoned off and watching bemusedly as rows of orange-suited gas-masked members of the emergency services tromp towards us shouting things through megaphones. It's difficult to make out what they're saying. Something about not panicking and doing as we're told for our own safety. I laugh nervously. It's like a bad episode of Casualty.
Then it stops being such a joke as the people in orange suits call us forward in groups of five. Eventually, I wobble off, heading toward someone dressed in grey with face obscured, who I think is a policeman - though it's difficult to tell because the outfits are so dehumanising. Less Casualty, more Doctor Who perhaps.
Everyone gets one-on-one attention. The grey suited man's job is to get me out of the 'contaminated' clothes I'm wearing and into a face mask, thick socks, rubber shoes and a fetching orange poncho. Sounds simple enough, except that getting in and out of clothes is anything but 'simple' for me at the best of times, never mind when standing in the middle of a muddy field being ordered to do it quickly, and also having to rip the poncho out of a sealed packet. Not easy for a malcoordinated girl with a face mask and gloves on. In a real chemical attack we would be given a knife to cut off our clothes, but I'm not convinced that would make the process any safer for me.
I take ages. And presumably the longer I take getting changed, the more likely I am to die of chemical poisoning.
Grey suited man is feeling guilty for not being able to assist, and explains that he's not allowed to touch me, because if he did I'd contaminate him. This makes me wonder how anyone's going to give such information to Liz, who relies on tactile communication, and what would happen to anyone who couldn't undress themselves. In the decontamination zone there is no personal assistance - everyone has to be decontaminated as individuals. So if you did bring a friend or PA with you, they'd be no help to you now.
• View Kate's photo slideshow of Operation Springclean!
Later I am told that members of the ambulance service are allowed to touch victims, so I suppose they'd find a spare paramedic type to assist disabled people, though I'm sceptical about how well this would work in practice when they'd be busy dealing with people who'd been injured in the actual explosion.
The whole thing is immensely intimidating because everyone giving directions looks like an alien. You know they're on your side, but because they don't look human, you're not convinced. Afterwards, they told us it was weird for them as well because their vision and hearing was obscured by the outfits.
Eventually, clothes are off and poncho is on, but my face mask has fallen off in the effort - so in a real chemical attack I would be breathing in loads of toxic fumes now. Oh dear. I had earlier been ordered to dump my contaminated possessions, so was somewhat surprised when someone tells me to pick up my walking stick again. Surely in real life I'd be expected to manage without?
After the event, I find out that the local Primary Care Trust, A&E and Red Cross would be raided for 'clean' mobility and communication aids to swap for the contaminated ones, but this wasn't attempted in today's exercise. Hmm. I do wonder how quickly those replacements would make it to us, and what disableds would be expected to do in the meantime, but we weren't to find out.
Next we make our way to the showers, where you remove all your clothes and are fully decontaminated by being sprayed for several minutes with a mystery non-toxic liquid - today, I suspect it's water.
I'm asked, by a man in an entirely different kind of alien suit who turns out to be an ambulanceman, whether I want to go the main route or to the ambulance. I'm not clear what this means, and don't ask because everyone's voices are muffled by their masks and it's awkward. Later Flash, who has a mild hearing impairment, tells me she had real trouble understanding what she was being told, so woe betide anyone who relies on lipreading in this situation.
I leave my companions and take the 'main route', figuring the 'ambulances' are probably accessible showers. Now, I'm someone who prefers bathing to showering because my balance is so poor. In any other circumstance, I would go the accessible way, but for the purposes of this article I decide to have a look at the standard emergency ones. These are like waterproof tents with shower nozzles in them, which you walk through in groups of three. By the time I get there, several people have been through already and it is very, very wet and slippy.
Before any of that, I have to get my poncho, socks and shoes off, which is almost as eventful as getting them on. Then I wobble through the showers. It's more than a little precarious, and I lean on anything firm I can find - a few times nearly pulling the whole tent down. Note to self: in a real life emergency, go to the ambulance for a bit of extra help. We're showered for around three minutes - possibly the longest three minutes of my life.
• View Kate's photo slideshow of Operation Springclean!
I then have to put on a new pair of socks and shoes, as well as a fetching mint green suit signifying that I have been decontaminated. I have similar issues to those I had getting the poncho on, and end up sitting in a big puddle of dirty water to sort myself out. Hmm. In doing so, I've presumably just recontaminated myself.
I'm eager to find out what happened in the accessible showers but when I rejoin Flash, Louise and Liz, I discover that there is no news. Flash was told, "We can't get you're clothes off like that" - the 'like that' presumably meaning 'while you're sitting in a wheelchair'. It transpires that wheelies would usually be taken from their chairs, put in something that is 'a cross between an Evac chair and a shower chair', and assisted by the ambulance service. This wasn't being rehearsed today, so who knows if it works in real life? One wonders what the point of a rehearsal is if you don't practice every aspect.
If wheelchair users had been injured, they'd be transferred to a hospital by stretcher. If not, they'd await the arrival of a 'clean' wheelchair.
It seems that the organisers had been concerned that Liz might fall over in the shower because there were so many trip hazards - tell me about it! - and eventually decided it was too unsafe to let her through. So now they've gone away to think about how they'd handle showering a deafblind person in a real emergency.
Next we all got transferred to 'rest centres' - in my case a nearby day centre. The organisers had succeeded in laying on accessible transport, so Flash and Louise both got there, though on arrival they discovered that the lift wasn't big enough to accommodate their chairs. The building wasn't quite as accessible as everyone thought, then!
To be fair, they didn't miss much upstairs: only jammy dodgers and tea, served up by volunteers from the WRVS. I managed to confuse one of them while registering my details, by both having CP and not having a GP. The woman became insistent that I must have a doctor if I'm disabled, and forgot to ask me what my access needs were, or if I needed any medication (which would've been taken off me along with my possessions). But I suppose the reason they practice these things is so they know what they need to do better next time.
Meanwhile, Liz had been transferred to hospital, where she was being treated as though she had sustained an upper body injury! Looks like I lucked out with the jammy dodgers! Although at most stages in the process, the emergency services did manage to partially communicate what was happening to Liz with her handy braille/print alphabet card, there were still some big difficulties. Notably when she was asked if she had any medication allergies and discovered only belatedly that they meant 'any medication OR allergies'. This would have been a fundamental detail in a real life situation.
Still, we were thanked profusely for attending, and have indeed given the emergency planners lots to think about, not least when they next hold an exercise. For one thing, they should have an accessible loo on site and leave routes open for wheelchair users. Every time Flash and Louise wanted to move anywhere on site which wasn't part of the exercise, six firemen were required to move their hoses and clear the way. Some girls get all the luck.
• View Kate's photo slideshow of Operation Springclean!
During the exercise, we met an emergency planner who is disabled himself. He told us that the Disability Equality Duty has pushed the needs of disabled people up the agenda. Good. I plan on giving him detailed feedback, if only to improve my own chances of survival in the event of a real attack.
In the meantime, do I think I'd survive if there was a chemical attack on my hometown tomorrow? Um, after breathing in toxic fumes and sitting in toxic water, probably not. Though it seems that I do have a better chance of survival than Liz, Flash or Louise.
To any terrorists reading this, if you wouldn't mind leaving your next attack until the emergency services amend their procedures after our feedback, I'd be most grateful. Imagine what awful PR you'd get if you killed a load of crips.
Back to top


Related links
Flash Wilson has written two entries on her blog about her experiences as a participant in Operation Springclean:
• Decontamination Part 1: The 'inaccessibility' rant
• Decontamination Part 2: The "what happened" entry.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.


Have your say
Have you taken part in any exercises like this? How were you treated as a disabled person? And having read Kate's experiences, how do you think you would cope in the event of a similar terrorist or chemical attack? Share your thoughts using the form below, or read some of the comments we've already received.

Your name:


Your email address:


Your location:

[David WJ Sherlock]