Disaster Management: Emergency Communications Centres to the Rescue

Federal executive council recently approved the release of N2.4bilion for the commencement of Emergency Communications centre project across the country, setting the pace for full take off of the project four years after it was conceived.
Emergence Communications Centres is an initiative of the federal government under the ministry of information and Communications. The centres are designed to offer Nigerians in distressed situation assistance by them making a call through to the centre on its code and the centre will respond with rescue depending on the nature of the distress.
The country has a poor record of disaster management in spite of the establishment of various agencies whose primary responsibility is to effectively respond to disaster whenever and wherever it happens, with the view to assisting the victims.
Among these agencies include the police, fire service, road safety and above all National Emergence Management Agency (Nema) established in 1999 to coordinate activities of all disaster management agencies in the country.
On January 27 2002, Lagos state experienced what many described as the worst disaster in the history when the Ikeja army cantonment went into flames which resulted in the loss of many lives. It is perhaps regrettable that greater percentage of Nigerians that died as a result of that incident were not killed by the exploded bomb but due to the fear of uncertainty, as they were not adequately informed about what was going on. Many thought that Nigeria was under attack by external force and in the process of running for dear lives, they met their untimely death by jumping into the canal. Observers believe that if people were informed either through radio or television on the cause of the explosion many lives would have been saved in that disaster. Few years after this unfortunate incident, Nigeria’s level of preparedness for disaster management was put to test again when on October 22, 2005, a Bellview Airline crashed at Lisa village, Ogun state. It took over 24 hours to locate the crashed airline and by the time this was done, the entire passenger on board had died. On December 10, same year, a Sosoliso jetline crashed within the perimeter walls of Port Harcourt Airline, consuming, in its wake, 110 Nigerians, including 62 children. The Airport Fire Service was not able to save any live from the resulting inferno owing malfunctioning of equipment. These are many other occurrences that have exposed the level of decay in the country’s emergence management institutions. It is against this backdrop and in an effort to strength these institution as well as provide a more effective means of emergence management that federal government through ministry of information and communications directed Nigerian Communication centres for the country.
Emergence Communications Centre
Emergence Communications Centres is an initiative of the federal government under the ministry of information and Communications. The minister in August 2005 set up a committee headed by Mr. Steven Bello of Nigerian Communications Commission. Other members include Mr. F.Y. Daudu, ministry of Communications as secretary, Mr. Balarabe Gambo, National Emergence Management Agency, representatives of the police and Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (Nitel), as well Mr. Chioke Ogugua representing telecommunications operators in the country.
The committee was to determine the organizational framework and administrative structure that will be required to establish and operate a public protection communications system; recommend a suitable telephone number that will be assigned for distressed call all over the country; as well as recommend means of funding for the scheme to ensure that it is self, sustaining and independent of government funding or budgetary allocations.
The committee was also to recommend a frequency or frequencies that should be reserved to communicate with the centre; to determine, if there is any legislative or enactment required in order to give legal backing to any of the recommendations made; and recommend modalities for its implementation.
The committee was given four weeks to submit its reports to the federal executive council. Upon the rectification of the report, NCC was directed to implement the recommendation on the establishment of the National Emergency Communications Centre.
Implementation effort
As apart of its implementation plans, NCC mapped out four levels of interaction on the establishment of the centres. These includes interaction with equipment vendors such as Nokia, Siemens among others that will be supplying equipment that will be used in the centres, telecommunication operators, civil society agencies responsible for disaster management as well as state governments that are going to provide land for the communication centres.
At the interactive session with telecommunications service operators held in Lagos, Mr. Steven Bello, executive commissioner, NCC, explained that the emergency service code is usually an all service number that can be called in any situations where state-run emergency service are needed.
Bello noted that the interaction with operators was to discuss the requirement for the interconnectivity of such centres which is based on Geographical Information System (GIS). According to him, the commission wants the operators to be able to send some information about the subscribers that are dialing 119 distress codes in case of emergency.
“We want to get where the co-ordinate of the cell site from which the call is coming from, we want to get the telephone number if possible the caller’s state and local government. Once we get this information, we can use it to query our data base which we are about compiling, from there we will be able to get the nearest response agency close to the victim, he said.
He cited instance of people who get into distress in places where they don’t know anybody or telephone number of closest police station, ambulance or other emergence response agencies. Such people, he said, can dial the three digit number, which will direct the person to an emergency communications centre nearest to him, and from there the person will be directed to the nearest response agency that can help him.
Apart from this, each of the centres would have standby ambulance and other infrastructure like a borehole to take care of some disasters. “We will have fuel deport in the emergency communication centre so that the police vehicles or ambulance stationed at the centre will not complain they don’t have fuel to move when it’s being called,” Bello said. “We are going to provide all the necessary infrastructure, in fact, in the emergency communications centres we will also provide helicopter landing park so that the states that have helicopters such as Abuja and Kaduna can make use of it when there is need for the helicopter to go and rescue somebody who is in a place that is not accessible.” All the emergency calls are going to be toll free from all network operators in the country.
In line with the recommendation of the committee on the method of financing the communications centres so that it will not depend on budgetary allocation. Bello said they are looking at a similar system in United States of America where one percent in every call made is taxed to finance the centre.
Having realized the need to partner relevant agencies in the establishment of these centres, Bello said NCC would collaborate with Nema in the implementation of the scheme.
He said this explained the presence of Mr. Daniel Gambo, deputy director, communications, Nema, at the interaction with telecoms operators on the initiative.
Gambo said they intend to engage the services of experts in disaster reduction and management.
Mr. Samuel Ucheaga, managing director, Mavis Computel Nigeria, the consulting company for the scheme, said there is going to be a legislation that will prescribe penalty for phones identified to have made calls or send short message service that is not meant for emergency situation to the code. The penalty, he said will be to block such phone line.
He explained that they are also going to establish a smooth communications between distress caller and the administrators in the emergency centres.
Ucheaga also noted that the emergency communications centres are going to interface with switches of telecommunications operators to ensure that calls are not delayed in anyway.
NCC has so far gotten land allocation from four state governments which include, Taraba, Plateau, Kwara and Kaduna. The project is likely going to take off in Abuja.