Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Doom

Today in our office about ten of us prepared for disaster. What would happen if an earthquake struck Beijing, we had a big event on somewhere with guest speakers, there were injuries, the power went down, worried relatives started ringing from Britain, how would we trace all our staff...? We have a big fat Emergency Manual but when you go through the detail, there's always something it doesn't cover, the phone numbers need updating, the first aid kit needs replenishing, there's a new city authority directive. 
I remember doing them in Bangkok, and they were timely. A few months after I arrived there was a military coup (I can still remember my adrenalised Director calling me at home: "The tanks are on the streets, I'm activating the Incident Control Team, hit the phones"), then the yellow shirts' occupation of the airport, and finally the red shirts occupation of the city centre which ended up being a warzone.

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