The Old Bill in Dear Old Blighty are preparing for the Big One.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/198567/Earthquake-training-for-police

Apparently in the last 1036 years (for when records have being kept) the number of folks who have officially been tapped on the shoulder by the grim reaper has amounted to 11.

Although I do wonder how the peasants coped with the earthquake threat before the Peelers came into existence.

I would imagine that much of the training would come in handy if you had, say, a major gas line explosion in a residential neighborhood. Oops, sorry, that is obviously entirely a too far fetched disaster that could never happen....

Even better than the article is the first comment by a reader identified as "blam":

"I believe that by now, most people are aware that environmental weapons exist. HAARP is the best known, but not the only one. The Hadron collider at CERN and the large accelerator in Texas are both potent enough to generate huge gravity wells sufficient to distort local time.

Why do you think we have seen the spate of volcanic and earthquake activity over recent years? The Quake in China was monitored and scalar waves were detetcted in the water. Natural scalar waves do propogate in water. The only conclusion is that HAARP was deployed to create this disaster. "

This is fantastic stuff.

If nothing else, perhaps a generic range of disaster preparedness helps with the locals' insurance premiums.

Otherwise, flood preps would seem much more UK-relevant. The same large-scale coordination and response would be needed. Unless, of course, you're really prepping for a disaster involving hopping mad sub-atoms in an urban area ...

Yucca_, I love the "blam" stuff. I really do need to EDC a foil hat. It'll give me something to boil water in when the big one hits!

Peasants got off easy; the thatch roof on your typical hovel is relatively easy on the brain pan. Pity the royals, the heavy timbers and stone blocks of their great houses hurt when they hit you.

Then again, I suspect that these sorts of exercises are generally applicable to any number of potential real or imagined mass-casualty events. A large gas explosion or terrorist attack that pancakes one or more buildings, Godzilla visiting downtown, earthquake (unlikely as that may be), or tidal wave all share a common array of issues.

Including:
A large number of confused and disoriented people who have few resources and are subject to panic and making the situation worse. People who need to be reoriented, brought up to speed, protected, provided minimum levels of food, water, shelter, medical care.

A number of people trapped or isolated under debris. People who need to be located and rescued.

Fracturing of infrastructure. Roads are blocked, power is lost, water mains lose pressure, communications systems fail or get overloaded.

Then there are secondary disasters. Damaged gas and power lines cause fires to spring up. Sewage and water mains can cause flooding, undermine roads and cause otherwise sound buildings to collapse.

Of course, all of this is secondary to getting responders mobilized and organized. They can't help anyone without being organized. A lot of official exercises justifiably focus on setting up a durable, redundant command, communication and coordination system. Setting up an effective chain of command across responder systems. Doing it when key people are disabled or out of communication.

Major problems can center around something as simple as people not knowing what radio frequencies/channels to turn to, and failure to using common terminology.

Okay, slightly off topic but I was watching a few of my favorite scenes from "The Day After" on youtube and stumbled across a similarly themed British film from 1984 called Threads. Most of you probably know it but for those who don't I thought it was really well done.

Hmmmm.....

One would think they could come up with a more likely reason than that, for training and preparation. The peasants might feel better about the taxes used for it.

Sue

The scenario that sets off the training is IMO, largely irrelevant. It is the practice for the response in the variety of conditions, co-ordination of responders, logistics, etc. etc. etc. that really counts.

That being said, it sounds like some bureaucrat somewhere had a list of things that needed to be trained/exercised, and, since this exercise was probably being planned at about the time of the Haiti earthquake, he/she had an a-ha moment and thought: "I know, a big earthquake here--it has everything we need."

Being a bureaucrat, he/she never thought to check on the history of British earthquakes.

The selection of an earthquake as the named disaster may have been made exactly because it is the least likely.

Use 'terrorist bombing' or 'tidal wave' and people might panic. And, of course, the always present conspiracy theorists would have a heyday speculating that the PTB know something, are expecting something, but aren't telling the public.

What happens if shortly after the drill there is an actual tidal wave or terrorist attack? The 'I told you so' chorus would be deafening. The truth that the named disaster for the drill was picked at random would get lost in the storm of public accusations and counter-accusations. The media could reliably be expected to 'document the controversy' and give credible sources and nut jobs equal time. Which means the average citizen, lacking the time to dig through the noise, is bound to be confused.

As it is the emergency services can't win for losing because picking the least likely disaster can be taken as a sign of ineptitude. Governmental/ bureaucratic ineptitude is a laugh line that never fails to deliver.

So it goes.

This does not show the government in a good light.
Pre-planning for disasters, and testing those plans is responible, but to pick such an unlikely disaster makes TPTB look silly. The fact that the plans would be useful for other large scale disasters tends to be overlooked.
An excercise in responding to a large explosion would be more relevant, for both accidents and terrorist attacks.
We have had a number of large explosions, both industrial accidents and terrorism.

We do have earthqaukes here, but they are very minor, very rare, and the loss of even a single life in an earthqauke in the UK is rare.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23443207-earthquake-hits-london.do
Report of the worst earthqauke in England for many years, caused fear and distress no doubt, but a very minor incident compared to events elswhere.