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FIRE AT BUNCEFIELD – a real BCM challenge Two weeks before Christmas, early on a Sunday morning one of the largest petroleum storage depots in Europe exploded. The event took place in South East England in a densely populated part of the country with a vast amount of industrial premises and business offices in the locality. The name of the depot was Buncefield. The exact cause is still unknown but there has been no indication of sabotage, arson or deliberate cause. The explosion was heard up to 100 miles away. My parents in law had their burglar alarm activated by vibrations caused by the blast – and they live 25 miles from the incident. It was described by emergency services as the largest fire fighting exercise ever in peacetime Western Europe. This article is not to discuss the details of the fire or the effectiveness of the response, information on both aspects can be found elsewhere for those interested. My concern is to look how the media handled it, and how the fundamental business continuity issues were largely ignored. To put it in context, 2005 has proven to be a uniquely challenging year for all of us involved with disasters, emergencies, security or business continuity. Starting with the tsunami, the world has experienced a seemingly endless stream of catastrophic events. Hurricanes in the United States, earthquakes in Pakistan and global terrorism including the London bombings of the 7th July were never out of the headlines or our consciousness. As each awful event was rapidly followed by another, professional pundits were on our TV screens with comment, criticism and the benefit of hindsight. In reality, we had not had time to understand the detail of what had happened before we were being asked about lessons learned and how things could be changed for the future. What did seem clear to most ordinary people, who are not experts in our field, was that despite our technological sophistication we were effectively powerless to prevent acts of god and only marginally better against the evil acts of man. Indeed a good healthy debate emerged about whether those of us in the BCM world could really contribute much of any practical value to such large-scale problems. My view has always been that just because you cannot do everything (such as prevent an earthquake), it doesn’t mean you should do nothing. The skills of all BCM practitioners involve planning to mitigate the consequences of serious events so in this sense our principles and methodologies could be applied to any event, however catastrophic. However, if we are honest we must admit that the key concerns after such events are disaster management issues, search and rescue, mobilising medical services and providing food and welfare. In the event of terrorism to these priorities are added the need to conduct police investigations and prevent further attacks. Although some BCM professionals might have at some point in their careers been police or fire officers, medical practitioners, or even employed by the major disaster relief charities, there are unlikely to have current active roles in these fields. To the casual observer, we in BCM might well appear to be commentators on disasters rather than participants with any contribution to make. If we follow the news agenda and simply become prophets of doom, whether it be about climate change, avian flu, or the war on terror we undervalue the importance of what we do and make it less likely that BCM will be taken as seriously as it should be. But then came Buncefield. On reflection it almost had to happen after such an eventful year. We had had the major disasters and the usual apocalyptic predictions for the future. What we had not really had was the freak incident, the result of “cock-up” rather than conspiracy, accident not evil, circumstance not design. Whilst the fires burned it was newsworthy but once it was known that casualty figures were relatively low and there appeared to be no international terrorists in Hertfordshire that day, the media soon forgot about it. Yet from a BCM perspective it provides more messages and lessons than all of the catastrophic disasters do. Firstly, it just happened “out of the blue”, with no obvious reason, warning or prior experience to suggest it might. I suspect that if you had asked oil industry experts the day before if it could ever happen, they would have laughed and said it was inconceivable. The site was totally safe, met and exceeded all regulatory requirements and there was no history in Western Europe to indicate an event of such magnitude was possible. Secondly, it happened at the most inconvenient time, two weeks before Christmas when demand for oil products was at its peak and many organisations were working at full capacity. For retail businesses or companies in warehousing, distribution, transportation or IT supporting retail, this was about the most critical day of the year that it could have happened. Demand was at peak, resources were stretched and resilience was at its lowest level – they were all very vulnerable. Thirdly, it was the things that many had not planned for that caused the most concern; for example, there were Police and other Emergency Service access restrictions. Lack of access to their own business premises (even if not damaged) caused anger, conflict and major frustration. So how did the media handle the story? The incident occurred early on Sunday morning so there was little business news being reported. All that we heard was the intensity of the fire, the bravery of the fire fighters, and the shock of local residents. We heard that some large companies had some premises in the area, mainly Distribution Centres and one had a main HQ building. We soon heard from all of the above that “there were no problems, contingency plans had been activated and that normal business processes would not be affected”. Strangely we heard almost identical words soon afterwards from the site operators Total UK. On Monday I was interviewed by the BBC and asked bluntly if Business Continuity really mattered much at all. The argument went: “despite such a big explosion and fire everyone seemed to be coping well. The initial press releases had indicated there would be no business impact. Perhaps BCM was a bit over-hyped, after all a UK fashion retailer had survived easily even though they lost 50% of their stock and had to fly a 747 shuttle back and forward to China to replenish it. Wasn’t all that was really needed was sharp and imaginative management? I told the interviewer to wait a while; I agreed that big companies with good plans would probably be fine if they lost an HQ or Administration building. Big companies who lost a Distribution Centre in the area might not go “bust” but would suffer significant “knock-on” affects throughout their supply chain. What really concerned me were the smaller businesses in the neighbourhood. They might be devastated and many might not survive. By Monday afternoon my warnings seemed to be coming true. The BBC website had started reporting that one company had applied to have its shares suspended whilst it assessed the affect on its business. An IT service company who processed a large number of the public services payroll was also reported to be in difficulty. Tuesday morning’s newspapers covered much of the same ground highlighting one company writing off £10m of stock, others closing their food depots on an adjacent site, another relocating 1500 staff. Very serious problems were reported from an on-line retailer and IT outsourcing company. Total and Texaco announced they were fully covered by insurance, which must have been a great comfort to those with homes and/or businesses destroyed. By then of course the plight of residents and small business owners was getting heard. TV news reported a small haulage operator who had backed up all his computer records, restored them at home and was ready for business except that the police had cordoned off his three lorries. Angry business people were getting increasingly forceful with the police; they needed to get to their offices to collect records, computers or documents but were not allowed to do so. The need for better “terms of engagement” between the public and private sectors could not have been better illustrated. On Thursday, the BBC reported that up to 5000 people were unemployed for Christmas as a direct result of Buncefield. On Boxing Day people were warned of possible gas/petrol shortages at Total and Texaco service stations. This is the point at which the media ask “what lessons have we learned?” Well I hope the answer is that as BCM practitioners we have learned little that we have not been telling people for 20 years. Hopefully some more businesses will listen more intently than they have in the past. I imagine that at some time we have all heard many of the following points made to us:
Next time you hear anyone say any of the above or similar, don’t scream, shout or pull your hair out – just say very calmly “Let me tell you about BUNCEFIELD?”
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