To continue our monthly feature, Back to Business, Andrew Mason has shared his experience providing support to his colleagues based in Japan following the disastrous 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
“During my time in business continuity, I have been involved in the response to all sorts of major incidents, from petrol crises to foot and mouth disease, fires and floods, IT outages and security incidents, severe weather, and numerous terrorist attacks. One of the more challenging experiences was the support provided to colleagues in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
It began on Friday the 11th of March 2011, at 14:46 hrs JST (7 hours ahead of UK time) when the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan struck off the country’s eastern coast. The 9.0-magnitude quake was so forceful that it shifted the Earth off its axis. It triggered a tsunami that swept over Japan’s main island of Honshu, killing more than 18,000 people and wiping entire towns off the map.
The news coverage showed the extent of the devastation that was caused as the tsunami, with a maximum wave height of almost 40 metres (130 feet), tore through the coastal towns and villages. More than 450,000 people became homeless as a result of the tsunami. The tsunami also severely crippled the infrastructure of the country.
In addition to the thousands of destroyed homes, businesses, roads, and railways, the tsunami caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The Fukushima nuclear disaster released toxic, radioactive materials into the environment and forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes and businesses.
This was the background to the request for support from the UK firm Business Continuity Team by the Japanese firm, principally to assist them in their top priority, accounting for the safety of their c3000 staff who were spread across the country, some at client sites in close proximity to the areas directly impacted.
At this time, the UK firm had little in the way of emergency communications technology that we know today. It did have a prototype in-house developed Lotus Notes database application called ‘Check-in’ that enabled, via email only, to send, receive, and record information and was designed for the purpose of accounting for people during an emergency. It had never been used or tested, so support from the application developers in UK IT was key to getting it up and running and for the BC team to be able to use it.
Time was spent during the (UK) day of March 11th getting the Notes application up and running, with a rudimentary test to check it was working, with the hope of using it at the start of the next day in Japan. Liaison took place with a UK partner who was based with the firm in Tokyo, and as well as the challenge with the time zones, it was learned that while English was the business language for the firm, only half of the firm in Japan spoke it. This meant that any communications had to be made in both English and Japanese, so we developed the message with the UK partner in English, who then had that translated into Japanese, and both versions were attached to the same email. On the UK systems, the Japanese characters just came out as rectangular blocks on the screen.
The Japanese firm also provided a download from their HR system, which enabled us in the UK to add their email addresses directly into the check-in system. By midnight (UK), everything was set for the first message to be sent to Japan (0700 JST) on March 12th. The biggest worries were whether people could access their emails, and if they could, they would respond to an unknown email source. To top it all, it was now Saturday! However, within a few hours, hundreds of replies had been received. Another challenge to overcome was the reporting of information from the check-in system, and a large spreadsheet was set up to enable responses to be shared back to Japan, with the UK BC team (team is a big word—Ruth and Andy are more accurate!) painstakingly capturing the responses and copying them into the spreadsheet, then regularly sharing the summary numbers and the spreadsheet responses with the UK partner in Tokyo.
The UK worked through the night, then for the next 4 days, repeating the message development, send, receive, record, and share cycle. Messages sent were updated each day, encouraging people to respond, asking people not to respond again unless their circumstances changed, and recording the responses received in the spreadsheet.
After 4 days, the check-in system had accounted for over 2900 Japanese staff, and the gaps were being filled in directly by colleagues in Japan.
Lessons learned from this response highlighted the benefits of mass notification systems and the need to be able to quickly and effectively communicate with staff during an incident. These lessons were eventually fed into the UK BC team project to improve the ability to communicate with staff during an incident, which was highlighted as a risk on the BC risk register. Enhancements were made to an existing system that was being used in a minimal fashion, expanding its capability to the whole of the UK firm. Following acquisition by a major player in the mass notification arena, the notification capability was significantly enhanced across the UK. As the UK BC team had shared its BC Management System across c30 countries (certified to ISO22301), it was logical to share this system, and countries were supported in implementing it. Eventually, its worth was recognised at the global level, and a global contract was put in place covering c175,000 across the network of firms.
The UK system was used to account for people across numerous offices in the north of England following the terrorist bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. While it was only for several hundred people, the response was c95% covered within 2–3 hours of the message being sent out, with live online reporting available.
The technology and capability of these systems have evolved over time. The ability to link systems together, e.g., BC plan management software (incident management team details), main HR systems, access control systems, travel management systems, etc., means that the ability to direct communications to the right people at the right time and in the right place has never been better. Anyone who genuinely has their staff as their top priority and has not considered these systems before should!”
