Managing the pandemic: ‘It’s been challenging but we’re as well placed as we could be’

The Humber Local Resilience Forum is the region’s emergency planning organisation and has years of experience in preparing for major incidents. But the Covid-19 pandemic has tested it like never before. Simon Bristow spoke to its chair, Chris Blacksell, who is also Chief Fire Officer at Humberside Fire & Rescue Service

We are still in the major incident declared by the region’s emergency planning organisation in March last year.

But with the continued success of the vaccination programme, and the adherence to public safety measures, there are signs that the Covid-19 pandemic, for the moment, may finally be being brought under control.

It’s a situation that is being closely monitored, not least by the Humber Local Resilience Forum (LRF), the region’s emergency planning body, which was set up to respond to and manage crises just like this.

Its members may consider it a mark of success that so few people may have heard of it. But it is now over a year into the longest-running emergency it has faced, and it is not over yet.

Formed as a result of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, the LRF is a multi-agency partnership made of representatives from local public services, the emergency services, local authorities, the NHS, the Environment Agency and others.

When and if the worst does happen, its systems and procedures kick into gear, and it is able to implement a plan for nearly every eventuality. But Covid - the worst public health emergency for 100 years - has tested the LRF, and the people who are part of it, like never before.

The awesome task of steering the LRF through the pandemic - and therefore safeguarding the one million or so people who live and work around the Humber, has fallen to its current chair, Chris Blacksell, Chief Fire Officer at Humberside Fire & Rescue Service.

He is ever watchful, but cautiously optimistic about where we are at the moment.

“It’s still a major incident,” Mr Blacksell said. “It doesn’t feel right to stand down from that. At the moment it feels like we are moving in the right direction. The variants of concern are something we are watching and keeping a really close eye on. But viruses do mutate, we know that.”

‘IT’S STILL A MAJOR INCIDENT’: Chris Blacksell. Picture by Tom Arran Commercial Photography

Mr Blacksell said the LRF was about “making sure people are planning for emergencies and preparing in terms of training, and we co-ordinate the response to any emergency that happens. We might have a response meeting once a week. Obviously, the pandemic being unprecedented we’ve been managing that together from the start”.

Describing how the LRF began to respond to the pandemic, he said: “There’s a risk register and we plan for a worst case scenario.

“We had pandemic flu plans in place, and that was a really good start. We’ve had a mass fatalities plan for years. Normally, we are meeting and reviewing this plan, making sure they work for every organisation, and we’ll test these plans so they are ready to roll.

“We had to plan for more people dying during the pandemic.”

One way the LRF did this - and an example of the potential magnitude of the Covid crisis - is the purpose-built mortuary it had constructed on the site of a former aerosol factory in Sutton Fields in Hull last May.

It was feared the number of deaths could far exceed existing mortuary capacity across the Humber.

The building was completed within five weeks of the decision being made. It has capacity for 760 bodies, but could be expanded to cater for “thousands”.

Mr Blacksell said: “We haven’t needed it but it was better to have it there than find out we needed it and not be able to treat the deceased with the dignity they deserve.

“That was a really good example of our multi-agency approach. It was always part of the plans in place. When we needed to implement it we did it early to make sure it was ready. The project was managed by a police officer.

“We had the mortuary managers from across the area working on it. Hull City Council provided the land for the site. The fire service was involved doing safety inspections of the site. Pressing the button and implementing it was a huge piece of work and we did that incredibly quickly.”

This also included sourcing the equipment needed for the facility, such as refrigeration units. “It was a good thing we bought them when we did because they became in short supply nationally,” Mr Blacksell said.

One of the biggest fears for Government since the first lockdown was announced was that the NHS would be overwhelmed. Part of its response to that was the construction of Nightingale hospitals, and the one that would serve Yorkshire and the Humber is in Harrogate.

Humberside Fire & Rescue Service firefighters have been trained to drive the ambulances should the mass transfer of patients be required.

The brigade has also been at the forefront of tackling one of the pandemic’s early crises - the PPE shortage.

“PPE shortages were a real challenge,” Mr Blacksell said. “We got involved at a very early stage, sourcing PPE from partner organisations to others; the fire service, police, other hospitals were sharing PPE resources to make sure we could get through that difficult time until we got national supplies and get them to the frontline.

‘THE PPE SHORTAGES WERE A REAL CHALLENGE’: Chris Blacksell. Picture by Tom Arran Commercial Photography

“Firefighters working from Howden Fire Station have been doing this since the start of the pandemic. Howdens Joinery gave us a secure warehouse facility on their site – now it’s used to store lateral flow tests – and using firefighters to deliver them to where they need to be.”

More than 2.5 million items have been distributed through this hub at Howden Fire Station in partnership with Howdens Joinery. They include PPE such as aprons, gloves, and now lateral flow tests, which are being delivered directly to some sites or to local authority hubs.

The Humber LRF was arguably as well prepared as any because it has had to be, with years spent mitigating the risks posed by the region’s strategic assets.

Mr Blacksell said: “The Humber area is quite high-risk nationally. We have the second highest collection of major accident sites in the UK, with heavy industry and refineries. They are very safe but they are a risk if something goes wrong.

“Twenty per-cent of the UK gas supply comes in here, and twenty-five per cent of all seaborne trade comes through this area. You can imagine we try to be very well prepared.”

An illustration of how well connected Mr Blacksell is, and how central to emergency responses he is, comes with sound of a text alert to his mobile phone as we sit in his office at Brigade HQ in Hessle.

The sender is informing him of an RTC [road traffic collison] on the M180. The chief fire officer checks his phone twice more over the next five minutes as the incident is updated, and then puts it down when satisfied no input from him is needed.

Describing how the alert system works for the LRF, Mr Blacksell said: “We’ve got a system where any partner can have an emergency and immediately everyone will get a message; health, police, fire. An emergency meeting can be set up in 40 minutes. It means it’s really well tested here.

“We’ve got into a good habit of coming together really early so every partner knows if there’s an issue. If it’s an issue that has to be dealt with on a multi-agency basis we’ve got that in place.

“For example, if there’s a large fire the health service would need to know if potentially they would be getting a large influx of patients.

“Most of this goes on behind the scenes. We’ve got a duty to warn and inform people – if there was a chemical leak, for example, we’d be pushing those messages out there very quickly.

“On the flip-side, we don’t want to cause unnecessary panic, so normally we have it under control and nobody realises [an incident has happened].”

‘WE’VE GOT INTO A GOOD HABIT OF COMING TOGETHER REALLY EARLY’: Chris Blacksell. Picture by Tom Arran Commercial Photography

Asked if the LRF has had the resources it needs, Mr Blacksell said: “Sat around the table we’ve got large organisations right across the Humber that have got billions of pounds of resources. A question at the LRF everyone is asked is if they’ve got resourcing issues.”

Last spring, when the crisis was unfolding, Mr Blacksell was so busy working with the local resilience forum that he had to hand over the running of the fire service to his deputy, Phil Shillito.

He said: “Our strategic co-ordination group was meeting seven days a week every week. There was a period of time when I left the running of the fire service to my deputy chief.

“I had to step away from the service and just manage the LRF. I wouldn’t have been able to do either job properly. But then that scaled back down again.”

As well as deploying firefighters to assist with the pandemic response, steps have also been taken to mitigate the risk to the fire service.

“We took a decision quite early on, before the national lockdown, to isolate the control room,” Mr Blacksell said.

“All emergency calls come into the control room; it’s a relatively small number of staff but they are absolutely vital for our operation, so we isolated them and stopped crossing over from station to station within the control room very early, and I think that paid off because we haven’t had high rates of illness in the service.”

Looking forward, the chief fire officer hopes the take up of the vaccines will remain high, but also that the public do not drop their guard and continue to act responsibly.

He said: “I’d certainly urge people to get vaccinated because that’s going to be the way out of it. There are some communities and individuals who don’t want to, and I think that’s a shame. Right now we still need to stick to the real basics – keep space from each other, wear a face covering. We need that going on at the same time as the vaccine.

“I’m not that frustrated by individuals in shops not wearing a mask; some people have got really good reasons for that, but I think large groups of people coming together who are not wearing masks has got that real risk.

“I respect people’s individual right whether they want to get vaccinated. I think the problem with this, with not wearing a mask when you should and not keeping your distance, that impacts on other people.”

He added: “Getting the vaccine so quickly has been hugely important. Some of the lockdowns have worked – you can literally see the graph coming down.”

As well as running the fire service and chairing the LRF, Mr Blacksell is also a member of the National Fire Chiefs’ Council, where he is the lead officer for fire investigation and Chair of the Executive Leadership Board. He is also Patron of the Burns Club charity.

Asked how he and his colleagues have managed, he said: “I personally think I manage to switch off when I’m at home. But yes, undoubtedly lots of my colleagues and people like me have found it a stressful time. There was certainly a period when lots of us were pulling far too many hours.

‘IT’S BEEN A TOUGH YEAR’: Chris Blacksell, left, with Simon Bristow. Picture by Tom Arran Commercial Photography

“We try to support each other and everyone’s looked out for each other. It’s been good to have conversations with other people in a similar situation.

“The length of time [of the pandemic] has probably been the difficult thing. As a firefighter you get some really terrible incidents to deal with for a relatively short period of time. An incident of flooding might last weeks and it becomes difficult to continue that response level. Obviously, this has just gone on and on.

“I think everyone’s put in long hours. It just blurs into one and becomes 24/7 because you’re in a 24/7 situation. That does become difficult; that balance between home and work.”

He added: “I think we are as well-placed as we could have been. I don’t think you can pre-plan for everything. Partnership-working around the table has been genuinely brilliant. Every organisation has assisted every other organisation when they’ve needed it.”