Safety Matters

[alwaysinjured]

Safety matters (or at least it should matter, but seemingly does not to our committee or chair)

I have been silent recently. But I read with total disgust the chair's comments in fellrunner - in complete denial and ignoring all that has been said on safety by the people qualified to comment on it.

The reality is BUT for luck if any one can call it that, so had Brian Belfield had survived longer, we would have in all likelihood an RO facing negligence charges. And the people who run our sport are seemingly not clever enough to see the close call and near miss they just had.

Like the bosses of concorde years ago, our executive seem content to see fuel spilling out of the wing of a new york concorde flight ruptured by a burst tyre, showing how lucky they were that it did not ignite to a fireball, fortelling the future of what could happen if they failed to act.
But no.
Such people had to SEE several hundred people become toast in Paris a few years later with their own eyes before they acted in protecting the wing tanks with kevlar proposed after the first incident. Sure they did a few other things. But not the one that really counted despite the vociferous minority demanding it. Some people are determined to see their house blown down before decide it is windy out there. Make sure the horse has well and truly bolted, is a creed precondition of closing the stable door it seems.

Like Morton Thiokol and NASA. The engineers expressing concern at the cold temperature performance of the booster seals were just a vociferous minority. Ignored until after challenger fell from the sky. Then is time to consider the seals. When seven were already dead.

So it is with our committee.

They continue to peddle the "volente" issue as a defence for RO then undermine it with a myriad of undertakings which provably did not help the organiser of the Grand Raid in france, (our last links) where volente is alive and well, but the organiser now found negligent in worryingly similar circumstances. A different legal system for sure, but volente is a core principle there too which proved to be a chocolate fireguard.

The committee continue to ignore the need to assess, plan and review as the basis of safety.

So assuming safety matters to some of you (other than the committee,obviously)
Please all take a look at this. Courtesy richard taylor for finding it..

Are RO worried about it? They should be...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...er-died-281027

An organiser cited for "a death contributed to by negligence"

Note the remarks.

"Although the provision of first aid for the event had been considered and the team of first-aiders had been employed, little or no thought had been given to what should happen if an ambulance needed to attend a person at the event"

"The instructions given to the marshals concerning what to do should a person need an ambulance were inadequate."

REPEAT
"The instructions given to the marshals concerning what to do should a person need an ambulance were inadequate."
TRANSLATION
The plan was not good enough and not well enough communicated.

Notice first aiders were present, the problem was the difficulty of getting emergency services close enough, quickly enough to help.

Any safety qualified person knows that it is a simple matter of doing a proper incident plan as part of an overall event plan. The "emergency incident plan" where issues like this are thought through and risks assessed.

That is why documents such as the HSE "event organisers guidelines" refer to such things.
That is why people trained in managing safety in complex tasks do that kind of think by instinct and training.

So Basic stuff. But not for us it seems. .

Our executive could not care less. They have been told the issue of planning needs to be front of agenda not rules. They are seemingly only interested in not being seen to do a "u turn" on their precious rules.

Not even a change in 2016 to let them "bed in" they pontificate uselessly.

You would have thought after the complete cods they made of the first set of rules, the executive would now retire to the sidelines gracefully and ask for help offered by people trained to know how to do these things, and allow them to do them. As offered by andy. As offered by me.. Not a bit of it. Not even some humility.
More of the same.

Notice their so called "advisor" completely missed the lack of any reference to emergency planning in the rules in response to that incident above.. Because he is NOT a safety adviser. He is a hindsight wisdom blamer. Not a safety manager. The committee are relying on the wrong man. They have been told that , yet they do nothing.

For those who asked me to join the dialogue. For sure I tried to engage in conversation. I GAVE UP
No doubt that has been misrepresented too. So here the truth of it.

Because the only item on the chairs "agenda" for a meeting was to talk about the "Misunderstandings" I have of her management - little point - my observations were spot on, and in any event a sideshow to the real issue of safety. The agenda should have been the committee misunderstandings about safety management. It was not even on the chairs agenda for that meeting. Not surprisingly, I was not going to waste my time on talking about her management style....

But that was not the real turn off. You would not believe what she said - apparently I had to "travel to leeds because her time was more valuable than mine" so she told me. I kid you not. Her very words. The sheer arrogance of the lady! The reality is the likelihood of help from me was withdrawn at that point, although it was a while before I said so. I suppose it is a little better than her previous imperious statement I was not "worthy of her time" in a previous email.

No greater progress with our rule drafter who despite a cordial conversation continues to amaze in his lack of understanding of any legal words Having failed on safety words like "hazard" and constitution words like "may" it seems he does not know what a "motion" is either. So little point in continuing that conversation - or his continuing in position as drafter. Yet he is still in position. WHY?

Little point in dialogue with the secretary either since he cannot see the massive and profound difference between skyrunning rules and our own, and indeed - notice the locked gate of that incident above - he had a locked gate in his race, last time I was there, (just like the incident above) which would have stopped all the runners , had someone not hotfooted it back to the start with minutes to spare, for want of a proper plan. Was his emergency plan any better? Did it even exist?

When are you guys all going to wake up and smell the coffee?
And decide the safety committee needs running by somebody who knows what the word safety management means?


So in answer to the points made in your letter to the coroner Madeleine.

"We believe that the response already given to the Coroner specified actions which go as far as reasonably possible towards preventing such deaths in future."

NO YOU HAVE NOT. NOT EVEN CLOSE. YOU REFUSE TO EVEN HEAR QUALIFIED PEOPLE SPEAK ON THE SUBJECT, LET ALONE ACT ON WHAT THEY HAVE SAID AND WHAT THEY SAY
Organisers must as a minimum produce a written reviewable safety plan within a framework and templates designed by someone used to safety management planning.

Further she said.. "In the process of continual improvement of our safety procedures we will fully take into account the views, and proposed methodologies, of the correspondents, but their views will not be allowed to dominate the professional advice and race organiser consensus that we receive."

WE ARE THE PROFESSIONAL ADVICE: your adviser is not a safety manager. Why did he not get incident/emergency plan into the rules? Because he is not. I am happy to be in the minority, since in this case it includes all the qualified/experienced safety people.
Proper safety practice demands a "competent person" leads, and that normal hierarchy is suspended to ensure that qualification and experience does not get outvoted by hierarchy. With good reason. Clearly. As proven here.

And incidentally good RO such as Richard Taylor, and Wynn Cliff for example produce written plans instinctively. And in doing so find a needless conflict between written plans and the FRA documents.

I notice Richard Reeve REFUSED articles on safety for fellrunner from us in case we were "off message" or some such tosh about "taking sides". So What hope is there for safety in FRA? When the media are controlled by a totalitarian state?
A proper safety officer would find the events such as the above and publish articles on them in fellrunner. We don't have one. It is part of the problem.

Safety should matter. But it does not. Not until there is a regime change.

And with that - which is my answer to the chairs comments in fellrunner - denied me in the magazine proper: I shall resume my silence.

In the hope that someone has a change of mind...Not me, I give up on this.
The depressing thing about consulting to companies is how most of them ignore the advice unless it lines up with what they are doing : they want advice just to allow them to carry on and defend what they do against internal opposition. But at least it has a "bright" side, you can get paid upwards of £700 a day for wasting your breath in the corporate sphere. Not so here...here I am just wasting it for no good reason, when I could be doing other more useful things.

Sadly I probably won't see you out on the hills, at least for a while. My latest knee problem is serious. Possibly terminal for long running.