Paper Bushfire Plans Putting Lives at Risk

This is to suggest revising Australia's emergency preparedness advice to householders for fires and other emergencies, replacing long paper based documents, with graphical web pages and Apps. As this is primarily an education exercise, the techniques developed for on-line adult eduction can be applied.

ABC has provided the useful video "What would you do if a bushfire threatened your home?", but the accompanying text points out a flaw in Australian emergency planning. In "Facing a disaster: the brain makes it harder than you expect", it says the video "... demonstrates the need for a plan that is written down ...", but then "It demonstrated in graphic fashion the difficulties people have ...". The key word here is graphic: the video with images is a more effective form of communication than writing.

The Bushfire Survival Plan from the ACT Emergency Services Agency is a 24 page document which is designed to be read on paper. While it is available as a PDF download, the document contains pages which are in landscape mode and appear sideways on screen. This document is hard enough to read on a desktop computer screen, let along a smart-phone. The document includes a photo of a family sitting around a table with one member diligently filling out the paper form in the printed booklet. This is far from the reality of how a 21st Century family interacts, as such a family would typically have several smart-phones and tablet computers at the table, with no paper.

People have difficulty reading large amounts of text, particularly when stressed. For this reason emergency exit sings in buildings no longer have the word "EXIT" but instead a pictogram of a running man. I suggest taking the same approach to emergency plans. There should be the option of completing the emergency plan via a web page and app, with more graphics and less text. All the members of the family should then be able to access the plan on their smart phone or Internet account.

Communicating this information can take advantage of the expertise available from on-line adult education, where busy distracted people are helped through the process of learning. One way top do this is to advise the student what they are going to learn and what they will have to do up front. ACT emergency booklet does not do this, taking until page 16, more than half way through, to get to the actual form. Most householders are unlikely to ever read to this point.  I suggest this could be "flipped" and the householder being told they task they have and then the materials in support of that task.

Australian Emergency System Capacity

An Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Emergency Alert Program was carried out by Torrens Resilience Institute, 30 July 2011. They found the Emergency Alert system achieved its purpose, with 83% of the people receiving messages. But this was contradicted by the report "Use of Emergency Alert during the Mitchell Hazardous Material Fire" released by the ACT Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Simon Corbell, in September 2011. This estimated that only 16% of residents received voice messages and 63% for text messages. Also the system was estimated to require several hours to send an alert to 80,000 residents, not the reuired 30 minutes.

Federal Government Rejects ACT Criticism of Emergency Alert System

The Australian Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, issued a median release "Australia's emergency alert system working well" (4 October 2011). This rejects criticism of the national Emergency Alert system by the ACT Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Simon Corbel. This followed problems with alerting the public to a fire in Canberra 15 to 16 September 2011. On the information available it appears that the federal position is the correct one. Problems were due to the ACT Emergency Services not using the emergency alert system correctly, rather than a failure of the system. The ACT Government needs to improve training and procedures for alerting Canberra residents to future emergencies.

Canberra Emergency News Alert Service

The ACT Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Simon Corbell, announced an Internet based emergency alert service for Canberra on 30 September 2011. The ACT Emergency Services Agency (ESA) will now provide information about emergencies via "ESA News Alerts" on the ESA home page, ESA News Alerts RSS feed, ESA Twitter account (@ACT_ESA); and
ESA Facebook account. Also there is an XML GeoRSS feed and ESA Incidents Map.

However, the minister's announcement did not address the problems which occurred with the formatting of text messages during a factory fire 15 and 16 September 2011. Poor formatting of the text messages cased confusion for the public. If the ESA is unable to correctly format a text message, then adding extra communication channels could compound the problem, adding to the confusion seen during the last emergency.

In addition the ESA web site failed an HTML validation test, with two errors. The web page scored zero out of 100 on the W3C mobileOK Checker, with three errors classed as critical. This could impede access to emergency information, particularly for people using mobile devices.

The ACT Minister for Police and Emergency Service needs to ensure that ESA has put in place procedures to ensure that clear and consistent messages are prepared for all communication channels and that the ESA web site meets technical standards.

Report on Use of Emergency Alert in Canberra

The ACT Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Simon Corbell, today released a report on "Use of Emergency Alert during the Mitchell Hazardous Material Fire". The eight page report notes problems with the system used to issue a recorded message to land-line telephones and SMS to mobile phones on 16 September 2011.

The minister's media release refers to the limitations in the national system, but does not deficiencies in the use of the system by ACT Government staff. In particular the text message contained the spelling errors Insadents for incidents.
Resadents for residents. Media reports indicated that as a result some of the public thought this was a hoax this is a well known issue with credible emergency communications. It is not clear why this failure in procedure was not picked up in the training and instructions issued.

The report notes that there are other means of issuing emergency messages, such as the web. However the report does not addresses the deficiencies in the ESA web site I noted on the day of the emergency.

Use of Emergency Alert during the Mitchell Hazardous Material Fire 16 September 2011

27/9/2011
Page 1

1. Background
Emergency Alert is a nationally coordinated telephony based warning system designed to send messages to the landline and mobile telephones of residents in a defined geographic area. The ACT is a partner in Emergency Alert and has established a capacity to use the system operationally in the ACT. Emergency Alert is not an “opt in” or “opt out” system, as it is based on the national telephone database of all Australian telephone providers.

Emergency Alert is operational, allowing messages to be sent to landline and mobile telephones in a defined geographic area determined by the billing addresses that occur in that area.

It will not provide messages to mobile phones within the target area that have billing addresses outside that area. Likewise, it will send messages to mobile phones outside the target area if their billing address is inside that area.

For the hazardous material fire at Mitchell, two Emergency Alert campaigns were run, and messages were issued. The commencement of messaging was at 0138 and 0319 on the morning of 16 September 2011 for the first and second campaign respectively.

This was the first operational use of the system in the ACT. Previous uses have been for testing only.

2. First use of Emergency Alert – 16 September 2011 – 0138 hours

2.1 The Messages

The first Emergency Alert was issued at 0138 hours on Friday 16 September 2011.

• The first voice message advised:
  
  Emergency. Emergency. The ACT Fire Brigade is responding to a Chemical incident in Mitchell. Residents are advised to evacuate the suburb immediately including the racecourse and EPIC. Further information is available via Canberra Connect, or go to www.esa.act.gov.au.
• The first text message advised
  
  Emergency. Emergency. The ACT Fire Brigade is responding to a Chemical incident in Mitchell. Residents are advised to evacuate the suburb immediately.

Spelling errors in the original text message are corrected above.

There has been criticism levelled at the ACT Government regarding the messages issued due to the
spelling errors in both messages issued via SMS. It is regrettable that this led to uncertainty regarding the origin and authenticity of the messages for some recipients.

Specifically, the following spelling errors were contained in the text message:

Insadents for incidents.
Resadents for residents.

The Emergency Alert System issues warnings via voice recording and SMS based on predefined templates for a particular emergency.

The template of the voice message requires words to be spelt phonetically by the originating agency to ensure that words will be pronounced correctly when automatically converted from text to voice by the system. However, this is not a requirement for warnings issued via SMS. This distinction was not taken into consideration at the time the Emergency Alerts were issued with the result that phonetic spellings were inadvertently copied into SMS messages.

2.2 Target Area

The Target Area was to registered billing addresses for mobile and landline telephones within the suburb of Mitchell including Exhibition Park (EPIC) and the Canberra Racecourse. The data provided in this report is based on information provided by the system manager on 17 September 2011.

Within this area:

22,598 landline services were identified. 1
2,693 mobile services were identified.
A campaign duration of 30 minutes was nominated.

Analysis of the Geocoded National Address File (GNAF) which is administered by the Public Sector Mapping Agency identified 1421 individual address points in the first target area, which is significantly less than the 22,598 landline services identified. This reflects the target area was largely commercial and industrial, and may include telephone exchanges. The ESA will raise with the system managers issues associated with the high proportion of landline services identified compared with the actual number of address points to potentially reduce the time required to send messages by the system.

2.3 Call Statistics

Of the 22,598 voice messages to fixed landline services identified in the target area:

5,851 (25%) of calls were answered.
2,375 (10%) of lines were identified as busy.
3,652 (16%) were not answered.
9,836 (44%) were invalid calls. 2
884 (4%) were fax lines.
NB: 22,598 (100%) of numbers were dialled.

Of the 2,693 mobile services identified in the target area3:

1,696 (63%) of text messages were delivered.4
895 (33%) of text messages expired.
58 (2%) text messages were undelivered.

3. Second use of Emergency Alert 16 September 2011 – 0319 hours
3.1 The Messages
The second Emergency Alert was issued at 0319 hours on Friday 16 September 2011.

• The second voice message advised:
  
  The ACT Fire Brigade is responding to a chemical incident in Mitchell. Residents of Franklin, Crace, Harrison, Watson, Downer, Kaleen, Lyneham, Hackett are advised to shelter indoors, immediately. If you are indoors, close all windows, doors, vents and turn off air conditioning. Further information is available via Canberra Connect, or go www.esa.act.gov.au.
• The second text message advised
  
  The ACT Fire Brigade responding to chemical incident in Mitchell. Residents of Franklin, Crace, Harrison, Watson, Downer, Kaleen, Lyneham, Hackett stay indoors.

Again, spelling errors in the original text are corrected above.

There has been criticism levelled at the ACT Government regarding the messages issued due to the
spelling errors in both messages issued via SMS. It is regrettable that this led to uncertainty regarding the origin and authenticity of the messages for some recipients.

Specifically, the following spelling errors were contained in the text message:

Insadents for incidents.
Resadents for residents.

The Emergency Alert System issues warnings via voice recording and SMS based on predefined templates for a particular emergency.

The template of the voice message requires words to be spelt phonetically by the originating agency to ensure that words will be pronounced correctly when automatically converted from text to voice by the system. However, this is not a requirement for warnings issued via SMS. This distinction was not taken into consideration at the time the Emergency Alerts were issued with the result that phonetic spellings were inadvertently copied into SMS messages.

3.2 Target Area

The Target Area was to registered billing addresses for mobile and landline telephones within the suburbs of Franklin, Crace, Harrison, Watson, Downer, Kaleen, Lyneham, Hackett and Mitchell.

Within this area:

86,801 landline services were identified.5
83,774 Mobile services were identified.
A campaign duration of 30 minutes was nominated.

3.3 Call Statistics

Of the 86,801 voice messages to fixed landline services identified in the target area:

13,784 (16%) of calls were answered.
2,690 (3%) were invalid calls.6
69,229 (80%) were not dialled.
1,098 (1%) were fax lines.

Of the 83,774 mobile services identified in the target area7:

52,700 (63%) of text messages were delivered. 8
26,740 (32%) of text messages expired.
3,049 (4%) of text messages were undelivered.

4. Analysis

In preparing the campaigns, there was an expectation that the alerts issued for the target area would be delivered within 30 minutes due to the nature and urgency of the incident. The system captured the identified areas and accepted the allocated campaign time nominated by the ESA. It was not until the results of the two campaigns were provided that it was identified that a significant number of phone messages and SMS messages were not delivered as the time specified for the system to dial all of the numbers with billing addresses in the target area proved to be too short. These are identified as “text messages expired” or “not dialled” fixed landline calls above.

While the system does identify the necessary time duration to complete a campaign, the system does not provide a warning to the operator that the proposed campaign is too short.

These matters were discussed with the managers of the system. With the size of the second campaign, it was estimated it could have taken 6-7 hours to complete – this would have finished sending messages around 9:00 - 10:00 am, well after the “shelter in place” advice had been lifted.

The system managers advised on a number of options that may assist in disseminating these advices:

a. Prioritise SMS messages by sending these prior to commencing fixed landline messaging;
b. Split the target areas into a number of separate campaigns, although this may not assist where the system is accessing a single telephone exchange to deliver the messages.

These issues did not arise in previous testing over relatively smaller areas. Testing undertaken on 7 June 2011 covered Dunlop and targeted 1573 fixed landlines and over 5000 mobile services. This test resulted in approximately 88% of landlines being answered and text messages sent to approximately 67% of mobile phones within 45 minutes.

Summary and recommended actions

Notwithstanding limitations arising from a discrepancy between the identified target area and the nominated campaign time, the Emergency Alert successfully provided warning messages to a significant number of people in the community that were acted upon.

Also, it is important to note that Emergency Alert is a single component of a comprehensive series of tools for alerting the community. The ESA’s systems for alerting the community to emergencies via the media and via the ESA website homepage were successful. This was demonstrated through local media resuming local broadcasting early on Friday morning. For example, ABC local media commenced broadcasting at approximately 2:00 am, compared with their normal commencement of local broadcasting at 5:30 am. In addition, the ESA with the assistance of ACT Policing used person-to-person notification in the early stages of the incident to warn those people who were staying at
EPIC when the incident occurred.

The wording and issue of any future alerts using the Emergency Alert System will be critically examined as part of the ACT Fire Brigade After Action Review for this incident. Pending outcomes of the review the ESA will undertake the following measures in relation to the future use of the system:

1. Additional training on the use of the Emergency Alert system to identified ESA staff;
2. Review of the internal procedures relating to the operation of the system, including quality assurance and authorisation processes;
3. Recognition that in future campaigns, the use of multiple and smaller campaigns may be more appropriate where a large number of voice and text messages are required to be delivered; and
4. The Emergency Services Commissioner will provide written feedback to the systems managers about the ACT’s experience of this operational activation of the system, including to suggest potential improvements in the operator’s interface, such as the provision of a “Red Flag” warning for circumstances where the size of the campaign exceeds the time nominated for delivery of the message.

It is also recommended that:

5. The ACT raise issues associated with the ACT’s operational use of the system in appropriate emergency management fora (including the National Emergency Management Committee and the Standing Council on Police and Emergency Management) at the next convenient opportunity.


1 The number of fixed landline phones for the first alert message was much greater than mobile services. In residential areas, there are generally a significantly higher proportion of mobile telephones to fixed landlines.

2 Numbers incorrectly identified due to customer’s records not being updated.

3 These figures are based on the campaign summary report provided by the systems manager and it is noted for the mobile services the “delivered”, “expired” and “undelivered” messages do not equal the total services identified. This
discrepancy will be raised with the system managers.

4 The system does not identify whether “delivered” text messages were opened and read by the recipients. Likewise, the system does not identify whether these mobiles that received the messages were inside or outside the target area at the time of delivery.

5 The number of fixed landline phones for the second alert message was similar to mobile services. As previously noted, in residential areas there are generally a significantly higher proportion of mobiles to fixed landlines. It is noted that the second campaign also included the area of Mitchell, which as shown in the first campaign, has a large number of fixed landlines relative to mobile phones.

Analysis of the Geocoded National Address File (GNAF) identified 37,017 individual address points in the second target area, which is significantly less than the 86,801 landline services identified. The ESA will raise with the system managers issues associated with the high proportion of landline services identified compared with the actual number of address points to potentially reduce the time required to send messages by the system.

6 See note 2 above.

7 See note 3 Above

8 See note 4 above.

Canberra Emergency Warnings About Factory Fire

The ACT Emergency Services Agency issued an emergency warning for Canberra at 11:52pm 15 September 2011:

Factory fire in Mitchell The ACT Fire Brigade is responding to reports of a large factory fire in Dacre Street at Mitchell.

Update to follow.

At 12:42am 16 September 2011 a second message indicated "Firefighters have been forced to move a few hundred metres back from the premises ..." and that "the business, Energy Service International (ESI), works with materials including oil from electricity transformers".

At 1:14am a third update advised "... ACT Fire Brigade has now ordered the evacuation of the whole suburb of Mitchell including a number of campers at Exhibition Park" and residents were advised to remain indoors.

At 2:27am "... Firefighters have been forced to retreat back from the fire following multiple explosions ...".

At 4:10pm the Emergency Alert system was used to issue a message to advise "residents within a 10 kilometre radius to remain indoors until further notice". Unfortunately I did not receive the message, although my mobile phone is registered within the danger zone (the system was last tested, 7 June 2011).

Media reports indicated that the warning message contained spelling mistakes and some residents therefore concluded they were a hoax. This is a serious problem which needs to be investigated after the current emergency is over. Such messages need to be composed from pre-prepared and tested templates, not ad-hoc. In 2003 one of my students investigated what was needed for credible emergency communications.

At 5:09am ACT ESA also commenced using Twitter as @act_esa with text messages summarizing the more detailed information on the ESA web site.

At 6:37am Update 11 reported PCB and Phosgene may in the smoke plume. But at 6:59am "ACT Fire Brigade have confirmed testing has resulted in no positive readings for Phosgene to date".

In June I suggested that ACT Emergency Services Agency needed to correct faults in their web home page. A quick test today shows that these faults remain. There a federal parliamentary inquiry into emergency communication networks is to report in November.

National Telephone Warning System Test in Canberra

The ACT Emergency Services Agency (ESA) will test "Emergency Alert", the national telephone warning system, 7 June 2011, in suburbs of western Canberra. Landline telephones in the area will ring, when the householder answers, the Standard Emergency Warning Signal (SEWS) will sound, followed by a recorded message. Mobile phones with a billing address in the area will receive an SMS message with the same information.

There are limitations with this system, including that mobile phones registered outside the area will not receive the message. This is being addressed. One which still needs to be addressed is that people who are using the Internet, rather than conventional TV, Radio and telephones, will not receive the alert. An option needs to be made available for the emergency messages to be received via the Internet.

The ACT Emergency Services Agency (ESA) also needs to correct the numerous faults in their web home page. The page fails a web accessibility test for the disabled with 67 Problems (WCAG 2.0 Level AA). As an example, the main menu illegible when a large font is used. In addition, ESA needs to correct the 65 validation errors in the HTML code of their home page, 2 errors in the CSS and make their web site compatible with mobile devices. The home page scores 0 out of 100 on the W3C mobileOK Checker. ESA have failed to implement their we site in accordance with Australian law and are placing lives at risk as a result.