"We have to do better" - not just for SMRT

look to Heaven for answers?

Equipment breaking down and reviewing your maintenance programme is one angle of the whole incident.

But I am more concerned with what you did when an incident happened.
How to manage a crisis when a crisis occurs?

Whoever took charge of that incident and subsequently making those decisions on managing the post-occurrence activities may determine the outcome of an incident with no casualty or catastrophic impact.

Imagine you, in the body of New York Mayor Mr Rudy Giuliani during and after the terrorist attack on Sep 11. Or imagine you are Mr Tsunehisa Katsumata, chairman of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. handling the threat of Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown and contaminating half of Japan and its population.

What we had in Singapore recently was 4 trains trapped in the tunnel between Bishan and Marina and another other 100,000 people affected in and around the various stations. We are not in Jakarta managing the disaster in Aceh, thousands of miles away. We are in Singapore managing a situation in the middle of Singapore.

But why does it take more than one hour to get help to those people trapped in the trains? Why do the various stations continue to play only pre-recorded messages? Why are TVs and Radio Stations not helping to alleviate information gap PROMPTLY? Why are our DJs only programmed to entertain? Can our media switch from entertaining mode to crisis management mode? The lack and lag in communication is making nobody wiser but leaving thousands confused and stranded.

Did the station managers and train drivers "froze"? I read about a train commuter talking to the driver. The driver has been trained not to open the train doors with reasons. But is there a point in time at which that instruction should be replaced by another? Apparently no.

After the first 15 minutes of standard off-the-book announcements, do they know what else they can do or should do while waiting for instruction from chain of command? Remember the bus driver who got lost after making a detour and continued to be lost for an hour while being guided by its "Central Command" on the roads of Singapore. He wasn't allowed to take advice from passengers in the bus.

Remember the movie "The Hunt for Red October". The movie demonstrated the tussle to do what is right ie. to sink the Russian submarine which appeared to be threatening US as per Command Centre OR act to treat it as an attempt to defect as per "front liners" in the form of  US CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) and US submarine captain.

I am curious as to the profile of the individual who broke the glass door with a fire extinguisher. Is he a product of Singapore's education system and yet display the guts to do what is right against all fears? Of the 4 trains, only one guy in one cabin took action to get fresh air. He is regarded as a hero now but he could be deemed to be reckless too. I can imagine he would turn green when the train starts to move just moment after he smashed the glass. The bus driver chose to continue to rely on his chain of command for direction for fear of losing his job!

Do we have a fail-safe arrangement? Do we have a Plan B? What if SMRT's command structure  demonstrated paralysis/ineffectiveness in managing the situation? Remember the movie "Armageddon" where Bruce Willis led a group of blue-collar deep-core drillers sent by NASA to install and detonate nuclear bombs to stop a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with Earth. While NASA was working on getting the drillers onto the asteroid, the government worked on Plan B ie. the possibility that the bombs could be detonated directly and independently from Earth.

Who determines whether SMRT needs help? Do we have a national crisis management team for civilian/commercial (not military hor) situations? Who can SMRT go to to ask for help from other agencies? In Sep 11 post-crisis review, one of the main fault of not anticipating the crisis was inter-agency turf war.

Yes it is difficult. I have asked a lot of questions. My only simplistic answer - "We have to do better."