Exercise Triton 04 - Lessons identified

Exercise Triton 04 was the first national exercise of its kind and size, It took place in June and July 2004. The scenario covered an extreme event (up to one in 1000 year occurrence) and with extensive flooding affecting nearly half of England and Wales. The exercise tested the nation's ability to work together and deal with extensive flooding. The scenario deliberately tested systems that would not normally be planned for and identified valuable lessons for the Environment Agency and partners in improving: How we work together How we can improve our forecasting The plans and procedures that we use How we communicate The resources at our disposal And in understanding: How the Civil Contingencies Act will change the way we work.

Who took part? Over 60 organisations and agencies took part nationally, regionally and locally. Teams of people based at 35 locations were presented with the emergency scenario and asked to respond as they would if the events were real.

Each team had to make decisions that included how to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people; inform and warn the public via the media; what resources they needed and what the priorities were; if they needed military aid; how to communicate up and down the chain of command and whether they needed emergency powers.

Day one focused on handling the emergency. Day two was about developing recovery plans. These plans looked at what was needed to get local communities, regions and the nation back to normal within a year. For many of the people who took part one of the most successful parts of the exercise was how willing and enthusiastic everyone was to work together in responding to the crisis.

Working together for a better flood response

The combination of high spring tides, storm surge, winds and wave action caused many flood defences to be overtopped and/or breached. The result was devastating. Many people were killed or injured and thousands of homes and several coastal towns and city centres were flooded. There was widespread disruption and damage to transport, power, water, and communications networks, along with major damage to industry and commerce and drowned livestock.

Summary of recommendations The lessons identified can be used in responding better to national emergency situations.

Multi-agency working With a number of organisations working together, roles and responsibilities were not always clear. This could be improved by arranging training development programmes for incident staff that could be tested in future exercises. The Environment Agency needs to be able to forecast more accurately the timing, extent and impact of tidal flooding on people, property and the community, particularly as a result of failure and overtopping of defences. Defra's Strategic Co-ordination Committee should contain more members including a representative from the Environment Agency. A strategic review of systems is needed to support operations, encourage people to work together better and help keep people informed at all times. This should include the development of a "Decision Support" programme (or secure website) that could be made available on the Internet to help organisations gather information quickly and efficiently.

The effectiveness of plans and procedures Local and national emergency plans were appropriate and only needed minor changes. There should be separate plans for the incident itself and the recovery phase and guidance provided to help recognise differences between these phases. Exercise Triton 04 showed people needed more training to better understand emergency plans. All organisations involved in such an emergency situation should include this as a target in their business plans to ensure better effective working in an emergency. The Environment Agency needs to improve its ability to advise on evacuation i.e. when and where people might need to evacuate and in what scale of event.

Communications The timing, speed and method of communication was critical to managing the incident effectively. Standard report formats should be improved together with a review of who to communicate with and when. Incident control rooms need to review communication equipment they have in place to make sure they can respond quickly and efficiently. Everyone involved in an emergency needs to look again at how they deal with the media to make sure that information is relayed sensitively and appropriately. Partners should agree a joint media strategy for use during flood incidents to avoid delays in important information to the public.

Resources The process and responsibility for allocating resoures needs to be clarified. For example, the Ministry of Defence should produce some guidance on how and what military aid is available. There should be a national review to see if there is enough dedicated emergency support equipment such as pumps, generators and mobile radios. Organisations from different sectors could look at how they might work together to share resources. There is a need for Gold control room facilities to be compatible with the equipment needs of all users. Using new communications methods, such as tele/video conferencing, could mean fewer people are needed to staff control centres.

The Civil Contingencies Act Exercise Triton 04 identified lessons that assisted in the preparation of guidance for the Act. This included terms of reference for Government Offices in the regions during civil emergencies, and revision of plans and procedures of all organisations to accommodate the new guidance. The nature and variety of requests for emergency powers demonstrated the need for national guidance to develop a better understanding.

Conclusion Exercise Triton 04 has tested the nation's ability to work together to effectively deal with a major flooding incident. People welcomed the improvements made following the extensive floods of Easter 1998 and Autumn 2000. Even more valuable lessons have been identified from this exercise that will be carried forward to further strengthen the nation's capability to deal with a major incident of this kind. Key partners have endorsed the recommendations in this report. It is now proposed that the partners take the implementation of these lessons forward, monitored by Defra and the Welsh Assembly Government in partnership with other departments.