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"The Cry of Distress is the Summons to Relief"​

REPOSTED By Request March 2025     October 17, 2020 This piece originally appeared in the Newsletter of the Historical Special Interest Group of the Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management, October 2020 Fig 1: Lewisham showing the wreckage and the collapsed bridge – source unknown   The current (at the time of writing) debate about appointments to the US Supreme Court made me think of the Lewisham train crash (1957). It took me a while to work out why I had made the connection but hopefully the reason will become clear to those who have the patience to read this short article through to the end. Those of us who were lucky to study under Eric Dykes at the old Civil Emergency Management Centre at the University of Hertfordshire might recall the case study that featured Mr Chadwick of Lewisham. It was his unfortunate involvement in the Lewisham rail crash of December 1957 that was used to illustrate the inevitable consequences of civil emergenci...
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Being a personal reflection on the importance of anniversaries

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  As anybody who reads my blogs knows, I think that that anniversaries are important.  One piece of feedback I received was to stop ‘banging on about them’.  I value feedback but I reject this suggestion because I have seen that recognising anniversaries can be a strong force for good.  This is true emotionally, but also practically.  They serve as landmarks in the temporal landscape.  They are an aide memoire of the lessons from major events and a benchmark to mark our progress or decline.  They also allow us to respectfully reflect on lives lost and loss endured.  Of course for those with personal connections with disasters anniversaries have a deeper and rawer significance. From a professional point of view we do well to remember the contributions of our forebears.  Their efforts are no less important than our own. Today my appointments took me through Moorgate station in the City of London and as always my thoughts turned to the horrors o...
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A Long Reply to a Short Post on Linkedin: JESIP

  This isn’t an article, it isn’t really a blog (although I will post it as such elsewhere).   It is really a comment on a recent helpful post on Linkedin by Rob Davis on the subject of the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles (JESIP).   Alas my comment is too long winded for the normal format. Before saying anything else I would mention that some posters have suggested that Mr Davis has pre-empted his own research findings.   This doesn’t worry me – some things are obvious even early on in research and any final conclusions that the author reaches will be subject to the rigours of the academic system that surrounds such high awards.   The fact that JESIP doesn’t always work is a well documented fact. JESIP is a simple, indeed a worthy, statement of good intent.   The principles are, in one sense, not capable of being doubted.   Perhaps this is the reason that criticism is sometimes treated as heresy.   As a member of the publi...
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Vigilance

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 I am grateful to the Crisis Response Journal who have published my recent blog:  https://www.crisis-response.com/Groups/352406/Blogs.aspx  Terrorism and vigilance   I have spent the weekend reading about the terrorist and similar events of the last fortnight: the attacks in Denmark and Norway, the conclusion of the major terror trial in Paris, the terrorism arrests in Cheshire and Hertfordshire (UK) and many other events around the world, writes Phil Trendall. Yet I detect that both the media and the general public see terrorism as something that is a long way down the agenda of things to be worried about. Perhaps, with everything else that is going on, this should come as no surprise. After all, for the first time in a generation we are seeing two superpowers in a state of confrontation and an economy that invokes 1980s nostalgia. But terrorism has not gone away and it is possible to be vigilant against more than one risk at a time. Moreover, state a...
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Potter Bar: 20 Years On: A Personal Reflection

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  This week sees the 20 th anniversary of the Potters Bar Train Crash of 2002. It was caused by poor maintenance. It was caused by corporate failings.   Seven people were killed and over 70 hurt.   Like all such incidents the anniversary will be a painful day for many.   I am pleased to see that a local church will be holding a service to commemorate the event. There were a string of major railway accidents in the late 90s and early 00s.   Southall, Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield and Ufton Nervet spring to mind, although there were several others.   I had a small role at many of these events,   the experience of which has left me with a tiny insight into the enormity of bereavement by sudden disaster and an acute awareness of the impact of such events on responders.   I had a minor role in the response to Potters Bar.   I dealt with the media and in the days following I hosted the bereaved as Family Liaison Officers brought them to the scene...
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