When recontacting multiple people at risk to inform them about a change of advice or evacuation strategy, prioritisation of who to call and in what order should be discussed as a priority with the incident commander. Prior to any direction from the incident commander, fire control personnel should consider recontacting callers based on the following prioritisation factors:
- People at risk who are closest to the hazard or face the highest risk of the hazard
- People at risk in specific locations who may be experiencing the worsening conditions
- The condition of people at risk
- Vulnerable people or people who may have difficulty in evacuating
- People who fall into the above categories, starting with the oldest calls first
The use of consistent guidance and language will ensure that all people at risk who are recontacted are given the same information. Consideration should be given to nominating a team or an individual in fire control to recontact multiple people at risk and provide them with updated guidance.
The progress made with recontacting people at risk and confirmation whether the change of advice has been successfully shared should be relayed to operational personnel and accurately recorded on the relevant incident logs.
Other fire controls may be able to help recontact multiple people at risk to provide a change of advice. Fire controls with buddy or consortium arrangements or those with electronic information-sharing methods, such as multi agency incident transfer (MAIT) may find it easier to do this.
If electronic information-sharing methods are not available, effective communication can be maintained using a separate and dedicated talkgroup. A single point of contact (SPoC) will be required to monitor this talkgroup in the affected fire control and update the relevant incident logs on the mobilising system when required.
When deciding if another fire control could support recontacting multiple people at risk, consider:
- The length of time it would take for the affected fire control to share information with an assisting control about who, how and in what order people should be contacted
- That the assisting fire control may not have access to relevant risk information relating to the building the caller is in
- What method to use to share information with an assisting control about who, how and in what order people should be contacted
- The ability of the assisting fire control to supply regular updates to the affected fire control regarding their progress and the outcomes of each call
Other suitably trained members of staff could provide support to enable an affected fire control to quickly recontact multiple people at risk, however it is vital that the affected fire control does not lose situational awareness about multiple people at risk if other fire controls or other internal members of staff provide support.