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11 March 2010
Confusion over evacuation plans
Country: UK
Exposing bus drivers to radiation while taking children and elderly people to places of safety has blown a hole in Sellafield’s emergency plans.
Emergency planners were told this week that drivers would be at risk taking coaches into a radiation plume in order to evacuate or rescue children from schools and residents of care homes.
Radiation levels at that stage of an incident would be high.
The dilemma was first highlighted following last September’s Oscar 9 emergency exercise. It tested arrangements, including evacuation and sheltering, which would take place if radiation escaped from Sellafield.
On the negative aspects of the simulated incident, Cumbria’s emergency planning officer David Humphreys said: “Possible issues with bus drivers refusing to assist with evacuation of schools, care homes etc may require revision.”
David Moore, the chairman of the emergency planning committee, who lives in the shadow of Sellafield, said: “It is not realistic to expect drivers to take their coaches into a plume. Some might, but I suspect that most wouldn’t.
“I get very frustrated that we are looking into things which should have happened 40 years ago. We still don’t have a clear-cut plan for getting kids and older people out of schools and care homes. Now what we’re going to have to do is make sure emergency services personnel are fully trained up and protected, including wearing respirators, for going into areas where people have to be evacuated, and that might mean having to commandeer transport.
“When I first started on this committee we were talking about evacuating people at Seascale but it was a question of who was going to be driving these buses? The plan has since been changed to self-evacuation for the Seascale area.”
There are no schools or care homes in the immediate Sellafield two kilometre critical incident area. Problems would arise once a wider area was affected.
Emergency planning officer Mr Humphreys said: “What we’re doing now is looking at evacuating schools and care homes at an earlier time in an emergency – that is the bottom line. Theoretically, as things stand you can only evacuate if the levels of radioactivity are high enough to justify it.
“This is not a Sellafield problem – it is a national problem. You can only collect members of the public if the release is at pre-determined level.
“Evacuation can actually be more dangerous. It can carry a higher level of risk than sheltering. We just don’t know what would happen on the day but we have to protect the public. Because of the possible unavailability of buses we are now looking at evacuating schools and care homes at an earlier stage.”
He added: “On the day of Oscar 9 the people responsible for buses contacted the bus company and asked whether buses could be sent to Gosforth and Seascale, they said ‘yes’ but there was no discussion about radioactivity.
“We don’t know what would happen on the day.”
Sellafield’s new site sirens for raising the alarm in the event of an incident will be tested for the first time later this month.
Local residents will be told of the differences shortly. Two different sounds will be tested – one for an incident confined to the site and another where there is a release of radiation into the air outside.
This week’s emergency planning meeting was told that during Oscar 9 the telephone warning system for alerting people living within two kilometres of Sellafield did not work properly. A software failure led to a significant delay in giving warning.
Mr Humphreys said: “We ran it again in October (a lower level exercise) and it failed again – we were assured it would work then, and it did not, but in December we ran a 100 telephone line test – a big private piece of work not involving the public – and it worked perfectly.
“The next public test takes place on Thursday.”
Mr Moore added: “We need to make sure the message is loud and clear. We don’t want to lose public confidence after working long and hard to get in this new system.”
“One local farmer who eventually received the automated call did not hear the word exercise and started ringing his neighbours to say something had happened at Sellafield.”
This article first published at 15:59, Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Published by The Whitehaven News, and reproduced with their kind permission.
11 March 2010
Confusion over evacuation plans
Country: UK
Exposing bus drivers to radiation while taking children and elderly people to places of safety has blown a hole in Sellafield’s emergency plans.
Emergency planners were told this week that drivers would be at risk taking coaches into a radiation plume in order to evacuate or rescue children from schools and residents of care homes.
Radiation levels at that stage of an incident would be high.
The dilemma was first highlighted following last September’s Oscar 9 emergency exercise. It tested arrangements, including evacuation and sheltering, which would take place if radiation escaped from Sellafield.
On the negative aspects of the simulated incident, Cumbria’s emergency planning officer David Humphreys said: “Possible issues with bus drivers refusing to assist with evacuation of schools, care homes etc may require revision.”
David Moore, the chairman of the emergency planning committee, who lives in the shadow of Sellafield, said: “It is not realistic to expect drivers to take their coaches into a plume. Some might, but I suspect that most wouldn’t.
“I get very frustrated that we are looking into things which should have happened 40 years ago. We still don’t have a clear-cut plan for getting kids and older people out of schools and care homes. Now what we’re going to have to do is make sure emergency services personnel are fully trained up and protected, including wearing respirators, for going into areas where people have to be evacuated, and that might mean having to commandeer transport.
“When I first started on this committee we were talking about evacuating people at Seascale but it was a question of who was going to be driving these buses? The plan has since been changed to self-evacuation for the Seascale area.”
There are no schools or care homes in the immediate Sellafield two kilometre critical incident area. Problems would arise once a wider area was affected.
Emergency planning officer Mr Humphreys said: “What we’re doing now is looking at evacuating schools and care homes at an earlier time in an emergency – that is the bottom line. Theoretically, as things stand you can only evacuate if the levels of radioactivity are high enough to justify it.
“This is not a Sellafield problem – it is a national problem. You can only collect members of the public if the release is at pre-determined level.
“Evacuation can actually be more dangerous. It can carry a higher level of risk than sheltering. We just don’t know what would happen on the day but we have to protect the public. Because of the possible unavailability of buses we are now looking at evacuating schools and care homes at an earlier stage.”
He added: “On the day of Oscar 9 the people responsible for buses contacted the bus company and asked whether buses could be sent to Gosforth and Seascale, they said ‘yes’ but there was no discussion about radioactivity.
“We don’t know what would happen on the day.”
Sellafield’s new site sirens for raising the alarm in the event of an incident will be tested for the first time later this month.
Local residents will be told of the differences shortly. Two different sounds will be tested – one for an incident confined to the site and another where there is a release of radiation into the air outside.
This week’s emergency planning meeting was told that during Oscar 9 the telephone warning system for alerting people living within two kilometres of Sellafield did not work properly. A software failure led to a significant delay in giving warning.
Mr Humphreys said: “We ran it again in October (a lower level exercise) and it failed again – we were assured it would work then, and it did not, but in December we ran a 100 telephone line test – a big private piece of work not involving the public – and it worked perfectly.
“The next public test takes place on Thursday.”
Mr Moore added: “We need to make sure the message is loud and clear. We don’t want to lose public confidence after working long and hard to get in this new system.”
“One local farmer who eventually received the automated call did not hear the word exercise and started ringing his neighbours to say something had happened at Sellafield.”
This article first published at 15:59, Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Published by The Whitehaven News, and reproduced with their kind permission.
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