When the lights went out

The lights went out last Wednesday and everything became so clear.

Paraphrased as a “catastrophic (engineering) failure” by the general manager of T&TEC, Kelvin Ramsook, the perils we confronted bore all the hallmarks of crisis bordering on disaster.

At sessions involving Caribbean and Pacific journalists, my friend and colleague, Steve Maximay, has been cautioning against casual conflating of hazards, crises, and disasters when, in fact, these phenomena occur at distinct stages of a process culminating in mortal harm and distress but emerging from a variety of latent perils – the hazards.

It is clear from last week’s experience that “catastrophic failure” along the engineering chain that links power generation and transmission, telecommunications services, and the provision of water, had the relatively unrestrained potential to become a health, security, economic, environmental, and public liability disaster.

From the reports so far, all except the latter featured rather insignificantly. But it could have been a lot worse. We appeared to have dodged a lethal bullet.

Based on the general principle that formulating a suitable response should never be left for when a crisis arises, it is important to note the multi-faceted dimensions of the required actions. They are not all technical/engineering in nature.

The logistics to address them include vital features of public communication, especially since social behaviour becomes important for purposes of mitigating the impacts of both human and non-human system failure.

So, yes, the independent power producers (IPPs) and T&TEC had disaster recovery protocols to address the knock-on impacts of serial technical faults. There was failure at this level. There are different hypotheses by experts – a community to which I do not belong.

Likewise, some of this is not new to WASA. The folks there had surely contemplated the prospect of a complete shutdown of power. Ditto the hapless telecoms service providers. Ditto state security and the main disaster and emergency agency, ODPM.

While there are investigating teams to deliver technical verdicts, claims of shameful failure are difficult to dispute.

There was no power, no water, limited mobile call service, no data, and a pervasive feeling of uncertainty and insecurity. Can you imagine the plight of homecare COVID patients to cite one scenario? This entire situation, to me, represented both discrete and collective dysfunctionality at several levels.

But even more than this, and this is the gist of my contention today, there was no evidence that the relevant state and private agencies had at any time convened, as part of a pre-arranged protocol, to implement a well-formulated crisis communication strategy. This was particularly urgent, given the fact of a pandemic.

I know enough about this to conclude that we are not instinctually predisposed to integrate communication functions with the technical. The composition of the current investigating team and their TORs clearly establish this.

In fact, the guidebooks (and actual practice in many jurisdictions) place public communication – as a feature of crisis policy and planning - at the top of the agenda, alongside the work of security experts, engineers, disaster recovery specialists, politicians, and others.

There is no evidence that anything of the kind occurred last Wednesday. There was no prompt assembling of institutional assets at the level of local government, state and private media, and numerous other partners to achieve such an objective.

There was also no pre-arranged, authoritative spokesperson/s to carry the required messages to inform and to provide comfort and confidence. Only ad hoc reliance on T&TEC professionals addressing just one dimension of the challenge. In this respect, the prime minister needed to be heard.

Meanwhile, the mandatory “golden hour” of crisis communication was lost. As far as I am aware, the first official dispatch came three hours into the crisis via T&TEC.

By that time, the haze created by social media misinformation had already led to traffic jams, talk of militant union action, crime sprees, and other rumours that won’t be repeated here.

Street corner windshield cleaners directing traffic provided an irresistible metaphorical statement on what actually happened last Wednesday. The day the lights went out and we saw so much.