STATES OF EMERGENCY - Patrick Lagadec

Getting disentangled from the briar patch of failure 243PerspectivesThe key lies in building a continuously-oiled system whose capacity forchanging speeds is tested regularly. A plan should be the picture on paper of areal capacity for action and interaction among numerous actors - fromindustry leaders and public authorities down to individual citizens, via variousgroups and associations.This is precisely what industrial, municipal, and administrative leaders did,on their own level, around the Rhône-Poulenc chemical plant near Grenoble,France. Their multi-leveled action included continuous information given tothe population, through public meetings, press articles, and brochuresdistributed to inform the citizenry of how to proceed in case of a chemicalaccident (7). The case is now considered a model in the field. Unfortunately,it is only too rarely followed in Europe, despite the obligation to provideinformation laid out in the European Community's directive on majoraccident hazards, the so-called Seveso directive. (In June 1982, the EuropeanCommunity chose to adopt a legal instrument, the Seveso directive, in orderto deal with major accident hazards incurred by some industrial activities.This directive required that installations fulfilling certain criteria were to benotified to the administration, and that notification had to include a survey ofsafety conditions in the installation in question. Article 8 of the directivestated that "Member States shall ensure that persons liable to be affected by amajor accident originated in a notified industrial activity (...) are informed inan appropriate manner of the safety measures and of the correct behavior toadopt in the event of an accident.") lThis is where the stakes are the highest: beyond a very fashionablediscourse on technological hazards, beyond the plans that must be prepared,are we ready to undertake the substantial transformations that will necessarilyentail changes in everyone's habits and priorities? One of the first steps to take(or to move towards) involves modifying this inherited culture consisting oftaking a myopic view of risk problems and of closing off the outside world.Without changes on this level, all our emergency plans will never be anythingbut paper.Top management and administration have heavy responsibilities in thisarea. Their job is to:- confirm the importance attributed to questions of safety and crisismanagement;- show, by the decisions they make, the stock they put in this issue;- open up discussion on these subjects with the main partners outside theorganization (without neglecting partners on the inside, such as safetycommittees and unions).All this requires a tremendous capacity for innovation and forrepositioning organizations so that they will be perceived and represented as1. See European Communities Council: Council Directive of 24 June 1982 on the major accident hazardsof certain industrial activities, Official Journal of the European Communities, 5.8.1982.