retrospective a crj retrospective - tony...

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With one exception – the South East Asian tsunami – 2004, the year in which the Crisis Response Journal

(CRJ) was launched, was little different from any other in terms of the types and numbers of crises that occurred. Thousands of people were killed, millions were physically injured or traumatised, and property damage or destruction amounted to billions of dollars. Some crises were caused deliberately or by human error and people were sentenced to imprisonment. But the year also revealed tales of immense bravery by rescuers, a number of whom were killed, along with immense fortitude on the part of the victims.

By far the worst disaster was what is variously known as the South-East Asian or the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. On December

26, an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter Scale occurred under the sea off the west coast of Sumatra, triggering a series of tsunami waves up to 30 metres high, travelling at 800kph. These totally overwhelmed coastal communities in parts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, killing 228,000 people, a third of them children. Up to 5,000 people from Europe were on holiday at the time, predominately in Thailand. Among the dead were 543 from Sweden and 539 from Germany.

With no tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean at the time, most victims were taken completely by surprise, despite a time lag between the earthquake and the impact of the tsunami. The estimated cost of a tsunami

early warning system for the Indian Ocean at that time was US$20 (€14.9)million, a miniscule fi gure compared with the estimated US$7.5 (€5.6) billion paid out in aid and reconstruction.

The tsunami was also the cause of the world’s worst-ever railway accident when an overcrowded train, the Queen of the Sea, was overwhelmed by the waves as it travelled along a coastal route between Colombo and Galle in Sri Lanka. The locomotive and carriages were destroyed and approximately 1,700 people died.

■ TERRORISM: Three years before the launch of the CRJ, we saw the events of September 11, 2001, when four aircraft were hijacked in the US; two were fl own into the towers of the World

A CRJ retrospectiveWe’ve hit a milestone: ten years of publishing since we launched in Autumn 2004. Here, Tony Moore takes a comprehensive look at incidents that occurred in the 12 months since Crisis Response Journal’s inaugural edition

First edition of the Crisis Response Journal

CRJ Editorial Advisory Panel

Willie Baker expert in the preparation for, and the management of, passenger transport emergency incidents Raphael M Barishansky MPH, MS, CPM, Director of the Offi ce of Emergency Medical Services, Connecticut Department of Public Health, USAErie Braakhekke Dean of the Master of Crisis and Public Order Management, Police Academy of the NetherlandsHelen Braithwaite OBE, Head of Resilience, Department for Communities and Local Government, UKJeremy Collymore Honorary Research Fellow, Institute of Sustainable Development, University of West IndiesDennis Davis CBE, OStJ, QFSM, MPhil, CEng, FIFireE, CCMI, Civil Protection Advisor, Vice Chairman FSF, Vice President CTIF, UK Major Erik L J L De Soir Domain Manaer, Human Factors and Medicine Research, Royal Higher Institute of Defence, Belgium

Ian Dunbar Rescue Consultant, Holmatro, The Netherlands

Satish Kumar Dogra former Director of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption for State of Tamil Nadu, IndiaBill Forbes AM, PSC (US) Lt Col (Rtd) Group Executive, Risk, Security and Safety at Seven Group Holdings, AustraliaDave Frodsham Product Specialist with WL Gore & Associates, UK

Roger Gomm QPM, Advisor, Trainer, Consultant, Associate Lecturer, Cabinet Offi ce Emergency Planning College, UKQu Gousheng Prof of Earth Sciences, Deputy Director Science & Technology Committee, Deputy General Team Leader CISR, China, Vice President, The International Emergency Management SocietyMike Hall AFSM MIFireE, FNZIM, Former Chief Executive and National Commander, New Zealand Fire Service, New Zealand

BrigGen Mag D Alois A Hirschmugl Humanitarian Affairs Advisor to Chief of Defence Staff, Austria John Holland OBE, Director of Operations, Rapid-UK, Rescue & Preparedness in Disasters, UKLee Howell MBA, BEng (Hons), FIFireE, FRSA, Chief Fire Offi cer/CEO Devon & Somerset Fire Service, UKArn Howitt MA, PhD, Executive Director, Ash Center for Democratic Governance & Innovation, John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USADavid Jones Commanding Offi cer & Co-Founder, Rescue Global, UK

Ørjan N Karlsson Head, International Relations/Assistant Deputy Director at Norway’s Directorate for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning (CPEP)Arjun Katoch Emergency and Disaster Management Advisor, India

11 join the CRJ LinkedIn group follow us on twitter @editorialcrj Crisis Response Journal 10:1

Trade Centre, one into the Pentagon, and one crashed in Pennsylvania. Coalition forces, led by the US, were in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where there were numerous terrorist incidents in 2004 – too many to mention in this article. Pakistan and Israel also suffered a number of attacks. Given the situation that existed in these countries, the number and the scale of such incidents were to be expected.

But terrorists were also active in Bangladesh, Colombia, Greece, Indonesia, Kashmir in India, Laos, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the Philippines, Turkey and Ukraine. Many were carried out in the name of Al-Qaeda, but a number of the more ‘traditional’ groups, such as the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in Indonesia, Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in Spain, and the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK) in Turkey, were still active.

The year saw the worst terrorist incident to occur at sea. An hour after leaving Manila on February 27, explosives, primed with a timer hidden in a television set aboard the SuperFerry 14, detonated and killed 116 people in the Philippines. A member of a little known terrorist group, the Rajah Sulaiman Movement, had set the device.

ETA, a Basque separatist organisation, was particularly active in Spain,

especially during August and December, but caused minimal casualties.

By far the worst incident in Europe occurred in Madrid, Spain, on March 11, when an Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cell detonated ten explosive devices on four commuter trains, killing 191 people, three days before a general election. Three devices failed to detonate and were made safe by security forces.

Terrorist activityThe subsequent investigation led the police to an apartment in a Madrid suburb where the terrorists were believed to be hiding. When the police raided the premises, four of the terrorists committed suicide by letting off explosives, killing one police offi cer in the process. But it was widely reported that a number had escaped.

Terrorists were particularly active in Russia and its satellite states. On February 3, a male suicide bomber detonated an explosive device on a metro train in Moscow during the early morning rush hour, killing at least 40 people and injuring a further 120. On May 9, a bomb exploded at the Dynamo Stadium in the Chechen capital, Grozny, during a parade and concert to celebrate the 59th anniversary of Russia’s victory over Germany in World War II. At least ten people, including the republic’s president, Akhmad Kadyrov, and the chairman of

retrospective

CRJ Editorial Advisory Panel

Thomas Kinderman MSc, specialist in negotiation, security and hostile awareness training, team response member for ShelterBox charity, UK Lina Kolesnikova Consultant in international relations, security, risk and crisis management, Brussels, BelgiumDr Vladimir Kuvshinov Secretary-General of the International Civil Defence Organisation (ICDO), Geneva, SwitzerlandDr Patrick Lagadec Former Senior Research Scientist, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, Consultant in crisis intelligence and leadership, France

Simon Lewis Head of Emergency Planning and Response, British Red Cross, UK

Dr Jay Levinson Adj. Professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA

Brett Lovegrove Managing Director, Valentis Bridge Ltd, Director NHJ Strategic Consulting, former Head of Counter Terrorism for the City of London Police, UK

Andy Marshall Principal Consultant Rhead Group, Former Director of Civil Contingencies for Staffordshire, UKMaj Gen Rashid Thani Al Matrooshi, Commander in Chief, Civil Defence, Dubai, UAEMaj Gen Jassim Al Mansouri Former Director General of the Kuwait Fire Service Directorate, KuwaitMostafa Mohaghegh Vice-President and Manager, Urban Risk Reduction, Red Crescent Society, IranBrendon Morris Head of Operations for the Hamad Medical Corp EMS, Qatar

Christo Motz International Consultant on Survival and Resilience, The Netherlands

Craig Nemitz Director of Field Services for the Global Foodbanking Network, USA

Dr Alvaro Pemartin MD, Remote Medical Offi cer for International SOS, Sierra Leone, IAEM Europa Treasurer, Spain

William Peterson Senior Consultant, Strategic Government Resources, former Regional Administrator for FEMA Region 6, Founding Member US Branch IFE, USA Ian Portelli Phd, MSc, Director of Clinical Research at Health Quest & Assistant Professor in Emergency Medicine at NYU School of Medicine, USAThomas V Robertson PhD, Board Member US Chapter TIEMS, Founder and Principal at Thinking Teams, USATerje Skavdal Chief, Field Co-ordination and Support Section, Emergency Services Branch, UN-OCHA, Secretary of INSARAGDenise DP Thompson, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Management, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USAMoya Wood-Heath Non Executive Director, Community Resilience UK


the republic’s state council, Khussein Isayev, were killed and a further 40 injured.

On August 22, two aircraft, a Tu-134 and a Tu-154, were blown out of the sky in Russia by female Chechen suicide bombers. The fi rst, owned by Volga-Avia Express, was carrying 43 passengers and crew and all communication was lost less than 30 minutes after its departure from Moscow Airport. The second aircraft, owned by Siberia Airlines, carrying 46 passengers and crew, left Moscow nearly an hour before the Volga-Express on a fl ight to Sochi and vanished from radar screens three minutes later shortly after broadcasting a hijack warning. There were no survivors on either plane.

Just over a week later, on August 31, another female suicide bomber detonated a bomb close to the entrance of Rizhskaya metro station, killing 11 people and injuring a further 50. It is believed that the intention was to detonate it on a metro train, similar to the incident in February, but security at the metro station was too tight and the bomber panicked.

BeslanThe following day, September 1, a group of between 30 and 35 heavily-armed terrorists, some of them wearing explosive belts, took more than 1,100 people, including 777 children, hostage at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, on the opening day of the new academic year; consequently there was an above average number of adults present. Russian security forces set up a cordon around the school. Negotiations took place on the fi rst two days, during which there were a number of explosions and the sound of weapons being fi red inside the school; some of the hostages were killed during this period. On September 3, amid scenes of utter chaos, Russian Security Forces used tanks and armoured vehicles to take control of the school, but the death toll was the worst ever following a hostage incident, with at least 334 hostages killed. One-hundred-and-eighty six of the fatalities were children.

From May 1, Saudi Arabia was the target of a number of terrorist attacks, mainly against non-Saudi nationals. The worst was on May 29, when three targets, the Oasis compound

in which employees of foreign oil companies lived, the Al Khobar Petroleum Centre next door, and the Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation Building, all in the town of Khobar, were targeted by a previously unknown group calling itself The Jerusalem Brigade.

Hostages were taken in the Oasis compound and the siege lasted for just over a day until brought to an end by Saudi Special Forces. A total of 22 people – mostly foreigners – were killed at the three locations; some of the terrorists also died. Just over a week later, the BBC Security correspondent, Frank Gardner, was shot and seriously wounded in Riyadh; his cameraman was killed.

A series of shootings in which individual foreigners were targeted followed and, on December 6, the US consulate in the port of Jeddah was attacked by fi ve terrorists who threw explosives at the gates of the walled compound and then entered through the entrance used to deliver mail to the consulate. Saudi security forces killed three of the terrorists and wounded the other two.

■ AIRCRAFT ACCIDENTS: There were a number of aircraft accidents during the year,

most of which resulted in 50 fatalities or fewer. An exception occurred on January 3, when a Boeing 737-300 operated by an Egyptian charter company, Flash Airlines, carrying 148 crew and passengers, mostly French nationals, crashed into the Red Sea shortly after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh en route to Paris.

There were no survivors.The wreckage was eventually discovered

at a depth of 1,000 metres below the sea and it was two weeks before a French salvage company found and recovered the fl ight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

Initially terrorism was suspected, but the wreckage was discovered in a tight debris fi eld, indicating that there had been no explosion on board the aircraft.

Three sets of investigators were brought in, from the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation (MCA), the American National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the French Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la Sécurité de l’Aviation Civile (BEA) but there was disagreement as to the cause of the accident.

Both the NTSB and the BEA put it down to pilot error, but the MCA was adamant that the accident had been caused by technical failure.

By far the worst disaster of 2004 was the South East Asian tsunami of December 26, which killed 228,000 people and left a swathe of catastrophic damage in its wake

The South East Asian tsunami, Beslan hostage crisis and the Super Ferry explosion were all hugely signi� cant events


■ AVIAN INFLUENZA: Commonly known as bird or avian fl u, H5N1 had been spreading through Asia since 2003. However, 2004 saw a major outbreak among the poultry populations of Thailand and Vietnam which, within weeks, spread to ten Asian countries and regions, including China, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea. In October 2004, researchers announced that H5N1 was far more dangerous than previously thought, because waterfowl, especially ducks, were directly spreading the highly pathogenic strain to chickens, crows, pigeons, and other birds; the virus was also increasing its ability to infect mammals.

■ BUILDING FIRES: There were three horrendous building fi res in 2004, one in Asia and two in South America. On July 16, 94 students at the Krishna English Medium School in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, India, were burnt to death in their classroom when the thatched roof caught fi re. A subsequent inquiry found that the school had an insuffi cient number of exits and no fi refi ghting capabilities. Ten years on, those culpable have just been brought to justice.

The second occurred on August 1 in Asunción, Paraguay, when a fi re in a three-storey commercial complex housing a supermarket, a restaurant, offi ces and an underground garage, caused two explosions on the fi rst fl oor. It was seven hours before the fi re was extinguished, by which time 394 people had died and nearly 500 had been injured. Immediately following the incident, the owner of the supermarket trapped people inside the building by ordering exit doors to be locked to prevent them leaving without paying for goods. Nearly four years later, the owner, his son and the security guard who had locked the doors were found guilty of negligent homicide. They were imprisoned; the owner for 12 years, his son for 10, and the security guard for fi ve years.

The third fi re occurred in an Argentinian nightclub in Buenos Aires on December 30. The club had only opened eight months previously, but lacked basic fi re safety measures, although it had been granted the necessary permit to operate. The blaze started when a pyrotechnic fl are ignited foam in the ceiling. At the time of the fi re, 3,000 people were in attendance,

but four of the six doors were chained shut to prevent people entering without paying. A total of 194 people were killed, most of them as a result of inhaling poisonous gases and carbon monoxide from the infl ammable materials.

Just over three years later, seven people were sentenced to terms of imprisonment that ranged from a one-year suspended sentence, to 20 years received by the club’s owner.

■ COLLAPSED STRUCTURES: On February 14, the roof of a popular water park in a suburb of Moscow that housed several heated pools collapsed, killing 28 people, including eight children, and injuring a further 191. Although the architect of the water park claimed the collapse must have been caused by a terrorist incident, it was subsequently found to be a design fault.

■ CROWD DISASTERS: One such disaster is worthy of note, but was not unusual for the period. Between 1990 and 2006 there were a number of serious incidents during the Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, which resulted in death and serious injury; 2004 was no exception. On February 1, as pilgrims fl ocked over the Jamarat Bridge in Mina to hurl stones at pillars, some people collapsed or tripped, the surging crowd panicked; a stampede ensued; 251 people were killed and a further 244 injured.

■ EXPLOSIONS: There were a number of explosions not related to terrorism. The worst, in terms of death toll, took place on March 16 in Russia, when a gas explosion ripped through a nine-storey apartment building in Arkhangelsk, killing 58 people. Approximately 18 months later, a former employee of the city’s gas services was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for deliberately ‘sabotaging’ the gas system, having been dismissed from his job a few days before the explosion.

Three other blasts occurred in industrial complexes in countries where, arguably, safety procedures are expected to be among the world’s most rigorous. The fi rst was in the US on April 23, when an explosion in a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production unit at Formosa Plastics in Illinois killed fi ve workers and seriously injured two others. People were evacuated from the area and fi res burned for several days. Three years later, a report from the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) concluded that the accident had occurred when an operator overrode a critical safety valve, leading to vinyl chloride liquid and vapour discharging into the plant and subsequently igniting.

The second took place in Belgium on July 30. Following reports of a gas leak, there was a major explosion of an underground high-pressure natural gas pipeline in an industrial park at Ghislenghien, about 50km (30 miles) south-west of Brussels. Twenty-four people died, mostly fi refi ghters and police responding to the original gas leak. The Belgian authorities called for assistance from fi refi ghters in northern France and a convoy of ten ambulances, a mobile hospital and support

retrospective

The death toll following the Beslan siege was the worst ever following a hostage incident: 334 hostages died, 186 of them children

In the UK, the Civil Contingencies Bill was introduced in Parliament on January 1, 2004


vehicles was sent to the scene, along with 65 medical specialists and a helicopter.

The third took place in Kolding, Denmark, at the factory of the country’s main fi reworks importer. On November 3, a small fi re broke out in a container. Firefi ghters attended, but the blaze spread to the fi reworks, causing a massive explosion that killed one fi refi ghter and injured seven others, along with 17 local people.

The surrounding area was badly affected, with over 2,000 houses suffering damage, of which 176 were rendered uninhabitable. The evacuation of some 2,000 people prior to the explosion saved many lives. In addition to those killed and injured, 34 rescuers, eight police offi cers and 27 members of the Danish Emergency Management Agency were treated for smoke inhalation. The cost of the damaged was estimated at around US$100 (€75) million.

■ MINING DISASTERS: The raw production of coal had been increasing in China over a number of years and overproduction in some areas was seriously compromising the ability of mines to operate safely. By 2004, while 1.2 billion tonnes was produced in mines that met safety standards, more than 750 million tonnes was extracted from mines that did not. Overproduction can be a crucial factor in coal mine accidents as the failure to upgrade mine ventilation systems to cope with increased production can lead to a build-up of potentially explosive gases.

The two worst single incidents in 2004 occurred in October, at the Daping mine in Zhengzhou, when a gas explosion killed 148 miners, and in November, at the Chenjiashan mine, where another gas blast killed 171. Both mines were producing more coal than offi cial inspections had approved.

■ NATURAL DISASTERS: On February 24, a 6.4 earthquake in northern Morocco, near the coastal town of Hoceima, killed 628 people and left 15,000 homeless. But it was cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons that wreaked havoc across wide areas at various times during the year, beginning with Tropical Cyclone Gafi lo in March, which killed nearly 300 people and caused widespread damage in Madagascar.

In July, the worst monsoon fl ooding for 15 years in Bangladesh, northern India and Nepal left fi ve million homeless and killed more than 1,800 people. Roads were washed away and hundreds of villages cut off by swollen rivers, forcing people to evacuate in search of higher ground.

In October, Typhoon Tokage, the deadliest to hit Japan for two decades, killed at least

80 people and caused damage estimated at US$6.7 billion. Meanwhile, the Philippines suffered its worst storm season for 13 years, being hit successively by a number of tropical storms and typhoons. Landslides, triggered by years of illegal logging, as well as fl ooding, resulted in around 2,000 deaths.

The latter part of the year saw a particularly busy hurricane season over the Caribbean and southern states of the US. In mid-August, Hurricane Charley, struck the south-west coast of Florida. More than two million people evacuated and thousands were left homeless;

31 died. In September, Hurricane Frances, which led to mass-evacuation in the US, and had 38 deaths attributed to it, was followed by Hurricane Ivan, which caused considerable damage and nearly 120 deaths across Grenada, Jamaica, the Caymans and the US. Then came Hurricane Jeanne, which caused over 3,000 deaths in Haiti and a further 30 in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Florida.

On August 16 in the United Kingdom, fl ash fl oods in two villages in Cornwall, Boscastle and Crackington Haven brought back memories of events on the same day in 1952, when 34 people lost their lives in a similar fl ash fl ood at Lynmouth. On this occasion, there was no loss of life, but only because a fl eet of seven Sea King helicopters rescued about 150 people from the roofs of buildings and treetops.

■ NUCLEAR INCIDENT: On August 9, Japan suffered its most serious incident at a nuclear plant until the crisis at Fukushima in 2011. Five workers were killed by hot water and steam, which leaked from a broken pipe at the Mihama reactor; six others were injured. Subsequent investigations determined the failing pipe had been omitted from the inspection plan.

■ RAILWAY ACCIDENTS: There were fi ve railway accidents in Turkey during the year, killing over 100 people and injuring approximately 250. Two occurred on railway crossings when trains hit road transport. The worst accident happened on July 23, when the Istanbul to Ankara express carrying 230 passengers, derailed and its carriages overturned, killing at least 38 people and injuring 80.

Elsewhere, there were more serious incidents. On February 18, in Nishapur, Iran, 51 railway wagons, carrying sulphur, fertiliser and petrol, broke loose from their siding in a goods yard in the middle of the night and rolled down the track for about 20km (12 miles) until they derailed, crashing down an embankment into the town of Khayyam. A number of small fi res broke out. Unaware of what the wagons contained, local emergency services arrived, but during their attempts to extinguish the fi res, the wagons exploded. Reported to be the equivalent of

Flash fl oods in the Cornish town of Boscastle; there were no fatalities because a fl eet of Sea King helicopters rescued people from rooftops and trees


180 tons of TNT, the blast demolished the town of Khayyam and badly damaged fi ve nearby towns. Over 300 people were killed.

On April 22, 161 people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured when fl ammable cargo on a train exploded at Ryongchon railway station in North Korea. The North Korean government released little information about the incident but, unusually, allowed the Red Cross in to assist. The explosion affected a wide area, some debris fell across the nearby border into China. The Red Cross subsequently reported that 1,850 houses and other buildings were destroyed and another 6,350 were damaged.

■ ROAD TRAFFIC COLLISIONS: Road traffi c collisions are rarely considered when reference is made to crises and yet, on average, more than a million people die on the world’s roads each year. It was estimated that 1.2 million people were killed worldwide in 2004, along with a further 50 million people injured. Two accidents in Europe are worthy of mention. The fi rst occurred in Finland on March 19, when a coach carrying 38 passengers collided with a lorry and trailer, leading to 23 deaths.

On May 24, a vehicle carrying 20 tons of

ammonium nitrate overturned and caught fi re in Romania. As emergency fi re crews attempted to extinguish the fl ames, the truck exploded, killing 18 people, among them seven fi refi ghters, a television crew, the truck driver and several villagers. The explosion left a crater 6.5 metres deep and scattered human remains and debris over a radius of several hundred metres.

The director of the plant and the managers of the two companies involved in the transportation of the ammonium nitrate were subsequently charged with homicide by negligence and each sentenced to four years imprisonment.

Crisis milestonesTwo signifi cant events took place in the US and the UK in an effort to prepare for the next round of crises. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the US ranked hurricane damage to New Orleans among the three most likely catastrophic disasters to affect the country.

In July, FEMA staged a fi ve-day exercise code-named Hurricane Pam, which simulated a hurricane hitting New Orleans. The exercise centred on the State Emergency Operations Centre in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and, according

to the events that transpired during the exercise, more than one million people were evacuated and between 500,000 and 600,000 buildings were destroyed as water fl owed over the levees.

However, it is arguable that this exercise failed to prepare the authorities for such an event. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans the following year, there was an absence of leadership, mismanagement and chaotic evacuation, resulting in the deaths of nearly 2,000 people; total property damage was estimated at $81 (€60.5) billion.

Meanwhile, in the UK, following extensive fl ooding and an industrial dispute involving petrol tanker drivers that threatened to bring the nation to a standstill in 2000, along with an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease in 2001, a Civil Contingencies Bill was introduced in Parliament on January 1, 2004. Known as the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, it became law later that year. The Act comprised three parts. Part I identifi ed Category I Responders, eg local government authorities, the emergency services and some health bodies, and Category II Responders, eg utilities, transport networks and remaining health bodies, giving them varying responsibilities for civil protection. Part II dealt with the powers to issue regulations in response to a wide range of emergencies, while Part III dealt with minor ancillary matters. While much of the Act did not actually come into force until the following year, Part II came into effect on December 10, 2004.

So 2004 was an eventful year. Many more crises of different types and of differing severity occurred but there has been insuffi cient room to include them.

The South East Asian tsunami, the Beslan hostage crisis and the explosion on the Super Ferry were all hugely signifi cant events. Since then, CRJ has been at the forefront of reporting such incidents as they occur, and analysing lessons learnt. Long may it continue to inform us of new advances in the fi eld. CRJ

AuthorTony Moore is Fellow and President Emeritus of the Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management, and a regular contributor to CRJ

retrospective

Nearly 100 students burnt to death in their classroom at the Krishna English Medium School in Kumbakonam, India (see p16)

retrospective a crj retrospective - tony...

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