If a report in the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, the emergency procedures in place aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig would had the effect of slowing response to an emergency rather than encouraging an effective response. A Wall Street Journal article describes many of the problems. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704113504575264721101985024.html)
Of course it is impossible to know what would have happened with better emergency procedures. However the delay those procedures caused certainly didn't help and may have made the difference between a short incident and the current problem we now have with oil spewing into the gulf, contaminating everything it can reach. A few men on the drilling floor noticed the problem before anyone else was aware of it. What would have happened had they taken emergency action? We don't know but it might have helped.
I have some experience with emergency response, having been involved in mountain rescue for nearly 25 years and a church emergency response coordinator for many years. In our rescue organization, the greenest rescuer has authority to take action if appropriate – and before he enters the field he gets training to help him make such decisions and take such action.
Contrast that to the situation described in the Wall Street Journal article. Captain Kuchta actually chewed out the employee who sent the Mayday message. I find that obscene, an employee actually being told not to act appropriately.
The report also says that, “The written procedures required multiple people to jointly make decisions about how to respond to 'dangerous' levels of gas.” And “A rig worker attempting to contain a gas emergency had to call two senior rig officials before deciding what to do.”
The whole procedure seemed to militate against a good response; it treated emergencies as decisions to be made using normal procedure. That is a recipe for disaster, and disaster is what they got.
In my practice as a decision-making consultant I differentiate between urgent and normal decisions. For normal decisions it is useful to take the time to gather information and think about the issues. Not so with urgent cases. Emergencies are well, emergencies. By their very nature they require quick action. Any emergency action plan that blocks such action is probably worse than no plan at all.
An effective emergency response plan will have several parts:
a. Anyone likely to face the emergency must be empowered to act. That includes all employees down to the janitor.
b. Those people must be trained to recognize emergencies and react appropriately. That training must go beyond the common technique of showing a video once a year. Instead it must include actual practice.
c. People must not be punished for taking emergency action. There must be recognition that people will make mistakes but it is usually better to err on the side of caution.
d. All appropriate emergency equipment must be in place and people trained to use it. There are reports that the Deepwater Horizon was lacking an emergency shut-off valve. Such a valve might have made the difference.
I am convinced that we can drill in deep water safely and effectively. However to do so we must institute appropriate procedures. Those procedures must first aim to prevent problems and then to respond quickly and effectively to any emergencies that do arise.
This is one place where government regulation is appropriate. The law must require good emergency procedures and that law must be enforced.
Showing posts with label emergency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emergency. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Emergency Response
Gina was shocked to learn why the previous occupants had moved out of their isolated rental house. It was because the wife had been raped there – and the rapist was still at large. To make matters worse, Gina’s husband often traveled for his work. Knowing that she might have to defend herself, she planned exactly how to do it. That included easy access to the butcher knife and thinking about what she would do with that knife.
Sure enough, within a few weeks someone tried to break in while her husband was away. Now was the time to act and she did – she got on the phone and called her sister who lived 40 miles away! She did not call 911. She did not grab the knife. She avoided being raped only because the assailant gave up before getting the door open.*
Don't laugh too hard. If you are human it is quite possible that you might make a similar mistake. We've had lost people with cell phones call their friends instead of 911. Then the friends have to find the right agency to call before a search can be started. Worse, without direct communication between the sheriff's office and the subject it can be difficult, sometimes impossible, to get the information we need for a timely rescue.
Just last week a local sheriff’s office got a call from someone in California. The caller’s friend had gone snowboarding and was lost somewhere on the south side of Mount Hood. However nobody knew where the subject’s car was parked, or which ski area she had started from. Without that information it is difficult to search effectively. It was not possible to reach the subject’s cell phone for unknown reasons (maybe she turned it off to save the battery). We weren’t even completely sure we had a lost person. Fortunately she was eventually found. (That event, by the way, is my motivation for writing this column.)
I've also had neighbors come to me for first aid assistance before they call 911. I don't mind, I am highly trained in the skill. However I am not as highly trained as the ambulance or fire truck crews, nor do I have the equipment they do. Besides I'm not always home while those professionals are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. My neighbors would be better off to call 911.
The psychology behind that type of error illustrates an obstacle to sound decision-making, especially under stress. Our right brain often leads us to act without thinking (cf http://hallillywhite.blogspot.com/search?q=right+brain). The right brain provides great help in dealing with every-day situations but is terrible at handling new problems. In those cases we should always check it against the logical left brain.
Fortunately most of us seldom face real emergencies. However seldom does not mean never. Most of us will face a few urgent problems during our lives. It may be an intruder in our homes, a traffic accident, a serious wound from a kitchen knife, or something else. It may even be an excited young couple when their first child is about to arrive. How do we calm ourselves enough to take appropriate action rather than acting in a panic?
One way is to practice ahead of time. When my wife and I were expecting our first child we went to classes that not only taught us what to expect, but also allowed us to practice what we should do. We even practiced driving to the hospital. Of course it’s a bit more difficult to practice what to do in a home invasion or traffic accident but the good news is that practice in one type of emergency tends to help prepare for other, seemingly unrelated, emergencies. A good first aid course will teach, and allow you to practice, the technique of looking and thinking about scene safety before exposing yourself. If that is done with gory fake victims it can help prepare the mind to check with the left brain before acting in other situations. Professional responders practice all sorts of situations until the correct response comes naturally to them. Most of us don’t have the time to do that, but we can improve.
Had Gina practiced calling 911 (with the phone turned off) and grabbing her butcher knife she would have been more likely to act appropriately when the emergency actually happened.
Another good technique is to just practice slowing down and thinking in daily life when our right brain tells us we just must have or do something. Is it really urgent to eat that piece of pie or cake? Do we really need to hurry and tell our neighbor the latest news? Such practice will accustom the mind to checking in with both right and left brains.
Then of course when we do feel stress or think something is an emergency we can make every effort to see if what we are about to do is really the right course of action. That will help us make better decisions, both in everyday life and in emergencies.
If we can discipline ourselves to check our emotions with against our logic we will make better decisions, in times of stress and at other times. That will give us better lives.
*I heard this account from the woman involved. I’ve changed her name to protect her privacy.
If you like my blog, please tell others.
If you don't like it, please tell me.
Sure enough, within a few weeks someone tried to break in while her husband was away. Now was the time to act and she did – she got on the phone and called her sister who lived 40 miles away! She did not call 911. She did not grab the knife. She avoided being raped only because the assailant gave up before getting the door open.*
Don't laugh too hard. If you are human it is quite possible that you might make a similar mistake. We've had lost people with cell phones call their friends instead of 911. Then the friends have to find the right agency to call before a search can be started. Worse, without direct communication between the sheriff's office and the subject it can be difficult, sometimes impossible, to get the information we need for a timely rescue.
Just last week a local sheriff’s office got a call from someone in California. The caller’s friend had gone snowboarding and was lost somewhere on the south side of Mount Hood. However nobody knew where the subject’s car was parked, or which ski area she had started from. Without that information it is difficult to search effectively. It was not possible to reach the subject’s cell phone for unknown reasons (maybe she turned it off to save the battery). We weren’t even completely sure we had a lost person. Fortunately she was eventually found. (That event, by the way, is my motivation for writing this column.)
I've also had neighbors come to me for first aid assistance before they call 911. I don't mind, I am highly trained in the skill. However I am not as highly trained as the ambulance or fire truck crews, nor do I have the equipment they do. Besides I'm not always home while those professionals are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. My neighbors would be better off to call 911.
The psychology behind that type of error illustrates an obstacle to sound decision-making, especially under stress. Our right brain often leads us to act without thinking (cf http://hallillywhite.blogspot.com/search?q=right+brain). The right brain provides great help in dealing with every-day situations but is terrible at handling new problems. In those cases we should always check it against the logical left brain.
Fortunately most of us seldom face real emergencies. However seldom does not mean never. Most of us will face a few urgent problems during our lives. It may be an intruder in our homes, a traffic accident, a serious wound from a kitchen knife, or something else. It may even be an excited young couple when their first child is about to arrive. How do we calm ourselves enough to take appropriate action rather than acting in a panic?
One way is to practice ahead of time. When my wife and I were expecting our first child we went to classes that not only taught us what to expect, but also allowed us to practice what we should do. We even practiced driving to the hospital. Of course it’s a bit more difficult to practice what to do in a home invasion or traffic accident but the good news is that practice in one type of emergency tends to help prepare for other, seemingly unrelated, emergencies. A good first aid course will teach, and allow you to practice, the technique of looking and thinking about scene safety before exposing yourself. If that is done with gory fake victims it can help prepare the mind to check with the left brain before acting in other situations. Professional responders practice all sorts of situations until the correct response comes naturally to them. Most of us don’t have the time to do that, but we can improve.
Had Gina practiced calling 911 (with the phone turned off) and grabbing her butcher knife she would have been more likely to act appropriately when the emergency actually happened.
Another good technique is to just practice slowing down and thinking in daily life when our right brain tells us we just must have or do something. Is it really urgent to eat that piece of pie or cake? Do we really need to hurry and tell our neighbor the latest news? Such practice will accustom the mind to checking in with both right and left brains.
Then of course when we do feel stress or think something is an emergency we can make every effort to see if what we are about to do is really the right course of action. That will help us make better decisions, both in everyday life and in emergencies.
If we can discipline ourselves to check our emotions with against our logic we will make better decisions, in times of stress and at other times. That will give us better lives.
*I heard this account from the woman involved. I’ve changed her name to protect her privacy.
If you like my blog, please tell others.
If you don't like it, please tell me.
Monday, September 7, 2009
The Rescuers and the Anointed
The accident looked bad, cars smashed and some passengers obviously injured. Passing motorists stopped and one tried to give CPR to a victim. That was difficult, his “patient” kept trying to get up and walk away. The rescuer had been trained in CPR but he failed to pay attention to the need to check for breathing and a pulse before starting the procedure.
It is often said that the first rule of rescue is “do no harm.” I think that should be the second. The first rule of rescue should be, “make sure rescue is appropriate.” CPR, for example, is for those whose hearts have stopped. Anyone who remains conscious has to have a beating heart. Even those who are not conscious may not need CPR (though they can benefit from other attention.) I think this has a great deal of bearing on the issue of “The Anointed” discussed in my last few blogs, people who want to rescue others whether those others need it or not.
Unneeded rescue may be just a nuisance, but in some cases it can cause harm. CPR can crack ribs which is a minor problem compared to cardiac arrest. However if the patient has a beating heart, there is no reason to risk that complication. There is a real danger if the rescuer is too intent on using his rescue techniques and ignores the question of appropriateness.
Other types of rescue can have similar problems. For example, the Kennedy-Johnson war on poverty (which I discussed in my previous blog) was aimed at a problem, which was diminishing already. However the politicians had some ideas they thought would be wonderful so they instituted those programs anyway. The ultimate result was an increase in poverty and wasted taxpayer money. That was the equivalent of a person who had learned CPR looking for a way to use his skill instead of looking at what was really appropriate.
As an “unpaid professional rescuer”* I have some personal insight into this problem. We all want to use our abilities. If those abilities are aimed at helping others we will want to help others. That can be great, some people need the help. My team once found a woman who had spent two nights lying among the rocks where she fell. She was going in and out of consciousness, with several major injuries. She probably would not have survived the night after we found her since it got very cold then. It was a great feeling watching the helicopter head for the hospital with her aboard.
On the other hand, we often find people who are simply overdue. Maybe they decided to stay out an extra day (not a good idea) or maybe they were lost but remain in good health. We do not call a helicopter for those folks; in fact we don't even put them in a litter. We let them walk out, perhaps with some of our people to guide them. In fact with the advent of cell phones we've been able to direct a couple of them to safety while rescuers stayed home.
Now rescue is exciting. Let's be honest, most volunteers join the team for that excitement and they don't want to stay home when excitement calls. However it is not appropriate to send teams into the field until there is reason to believe that someone needs them. The responsible authority (usually a sheriff's deputy) is charged with determining that need before he calls the teams out.
Firefighters, some cops, and other emergency responders likewise like to respond to the need. Their services are invaluable but they can go too far. We've all heard the story of the bored cop who stops people for trivial reasons, or the physician who wants so badly to use a new treatment that he applies it to a patient who doesn't need it. In extreme cases, firefighters have been known to set fires to create their own excitement. Unless the urge to rescue is controlled it can cause its own problems.
I think this is one of the problems with the “rescuers” described in Sowell's book, “The Vision of the Anointed.” The people who see themselves as rescuers of humanity need problems to solve – and they need to solve them in their own preferred way. When they see poverty they just know that their solution is needed, in spite of the fact that poverty is decreasing already. When they think they see racism, they just know that they must step in and solve the problem, even if what they see is not really racism. An example of the latter is the recent case of the Harvard professor who accused a cop of racism when the cop was really there to help prevent burglary of the professor's home. Many of the “anointed,” including President Obama, jumped on that one. Before they even had the facts, they assumed racism was involved.
As a rescuer, I know the temptation to overreact to problems or even to imagine problems when they might not exist. The only solution is to learn to control our urge to act until we evaluate the situation. Is there a real problem? If so, will our solution really help or will it just foster dependence? Are we really helping or just meddling in someone's life?
Unfortunately our political process is biased toward action, whether that action is appropriate or not. Any politician who refuses to use taxpayer money to solve a perceived problem will be called a “do-nothing” and likely voted out of office. Only when the voters recognize this problem will that change. We must realize that sometimes nothing is exactly what we should do. (See for example http://hallillywhite.blogspot.com/search?q=don%27t+just+do+something)
That is the problem with the people Sowell describes in the two books I've just reviewed. Their arrogance leads them to believe that they can and should solve all the world's problems. However many of those problems are minor or only imaginary. Even the real problems are not usually amenable to the “solutions” created by such people.
We must deny such people the power to meddle in our lives and use our tax money to meddle in the lives of others.
*Some rescue organizations use the term “unpaid professional” to emphasize the need to have skills equivalent to those of paid rescuers, even though we are volunteers.
If you like my blog, please tell others.
If you don't like it, please tell me.
It is often said that the first rule of rescue is “do no harm.” I think that should be the second. The first rule of rescue should be, “make sure rescue is appropriate.” CPR, for example, is for those whose hearts have stopped. Anyone who remains conscious has to have a beating heart. Even those who are not conscious may not need CPR (though they can benefit from other attention.) I think this has a great deal of bearing on the issue of “The Anointed” discussed in my last few blogs, people who want to rescue others whether those others need it or not.
Unneeded rescue may be just a nuisance, but in some cases it can cause harm. CPR can crack ribs which is a minor problem compared to cardiac arrest. However if the patient has a beating heart, there is no reason to risk that complication. There is a real danger if the rescuer is too intent on using his rescue techniques and ignores the question of appropriateness.
Other types of rescue can have similar problems. For example, the Kennedy-Johnson war on poverty (which I discussed in my previous blog) was aimed at a problem, which was diminishing already. However the politicians had some ideas they thought would be wonderful so they instituted those programs anyway. The ultimate result was an increase in poverty and wasted taxpayer money. That was the equivalent of a person who had learned CPR looking for a way to use his skill instead of looking at what was really appropriate.
As an “unpaid professional rescuer”* I have some personal insight into this problem. We all want to use our abilities. If those abilities are aimed at helping others we will want to help others. That can be great, some people need the help. My team once found a woman who had spent two nights lying among the rocks where she fell. She was going in and out of consciousness, with several major injuries. She probably would not have survived the night after we found her since it got very cold then. It was a great feeling watching the helicopter head for the hospital with her aboard.
On the other hand, we often find people who are simply overdue. Maybe they decided to stay out an extra day (not a good idea) or maybe they were lost but remain in good health. We do not call a helicopter for those folks; in fact we don't even put them in a litter. We let them walk out, perhaps with some of our people to guide them. In fact with the advent of cell phones we've been able to direct a couple of them to safety while rescuers stayed home.
Now rescue is exciting. Let's be honest, most volunteers join the team for that excitement and they don't want to stay home when excitement calls. However it is not appropriate to send teams into the field until there is reason to believe that someone needs them. The responsible authority (usually a sheriff's deputy) is charged with determining that need before he calls the teams out.
Firefighters, some cops, and other emergency responders likewise like to respond to the need. Their services are invaluable but they can go too far. We've all heard the story of the bored cop who stops people for trivial reasons, or the physician who wants so badly to use a new treatment that he applies it to a patient who doesn't need it. In extreme cases, firefighters have been known to set fires to create their own excitement. Unless the urge to rescue is controlled it can cause its own problems.
I think this is one of the problems with the “rescuers” described in Sowell's book, “The Vision of the Anointed.” The people who see themselves as rescuers of humanity need problems to solve – and they need to solve them in their own preferred way. When they see poverty they just know that their solution is needed, in spite of the fact that poverty is decreasing already. When they think they see racism, they just know that they must step in and solve the problem, even if what they see is not really racism. An example of the latter is the recent case of the Harvard professor who accused a cop of racism when the cop was really there to help prevent burglary of the professor's home. Many of the “anointed,” including President Obama, jumped on that one. Before they even had the facts, they assumed racism was involved.
As a rescuer, I know the temptation to overreact to problems or even to imagine problems when they might not exist. The only solution is to learn to control our urge to act until we evaluate the situation. Is there a real problem? If so, will our solution really help or will it just foster dependence? Are we really helping or just meddling in someone's life?
Unfortunately our political process is biased toward action, whether that action is appropriate or not. Any politician who refuses to use taxpayer money to solve a perceived problem will be called a “do-nothing” and likely voted out of office. Only when the voters recognize this problem will that change. We must realize that sometimes nothing is exactly what we should do. (See for example http://hallillywhite.blogspot.com/search?q=don%27t+just+do+something)
That is the problem with the people Sowell describes in the two books I've just reviewed. Their arrogance leads them to believe that they can and should solve all the world's problems. However many of those problems are minor or only imaginary. Even the real problems are not usually amenable to the “solutions” created by such people.
We must deny such people the power to meddle in our lives and use our tax money to meddle in the lives of others.
*Some rescue organizations use the term “unpaid professional” to emphasize the need to have skills equivalent to those of paid rescuers, even though we are volunteers.
If you like my blog, please tell others.
If you don't like it, please tell me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
