In today’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the recent fire in Glasgow and the effects it has had on the local community.

Although I don’t live in Glasgow itself but in Houston, about 20 miles outside the city, the fire was the talk of the locals and had pushed President Trump and the war with Iran aside as the main topic of conversation. The known facts so far are that the fire started on Sunday afternoon in a vape shop on a street which ran parallel to Central Station, which, as all news bulletins have said, is the busiest station in Scotland, with 68,000 people passing through it each day. A passer-by, Lamin Kongira, a Glaswegian since 2009 and originally from Gambia, got a fire extinguisher from the Subway sandwich shop next door but was driven back by an explosion. The fire quickly spread throughout the building.

Details Of The Fire

It has been said that the building had a stone façade, but a wooden interior, and had been substantially altered for different commercial uses over the years, so there would likely be all sorts of voids within which the fire could spread. The fire completely burned out the building, with only some of the façade intact, and they were still damping down the fire on Thursday, four days later. The building was an iconic part of Glasgow architecture, and I heard on the news last night that the remaining façade will be demolished. Luckily, all the people in the building and the surrounding buildings were evacuated safely and nobody was injured.

Train Hub

The building backs on to Central Station, which is one of the hubs for trains south to England, as well as a large number of commuter lines. The station was closed and evacuated and has remained closed this week, and the closure will go on into next week.

Some Impacts As The Effect Ripples Out

After an incident, there are always a lot of impacts that ripple out from the incident. Some are known to the public because they are covered in the news bulletins, such as the owners of small businesses in the building who lost their livelihoods and all their stock. The impact on others will never make the news and will only affect the individuals.

1. My colleague, Stuart, was not so lucky on Monday – the day after the fire – when he went to Birmingham to run an exercise for a client with me. He was due to go from Glasgow, but as the station was closed and there were no trains south, he had to be driven to Edinburgh to catch a train. He then had a 12-hour journey to Birmingham because the trains were in chaos. It wasn’t helped by the fact that earlier in the day there had been trespassers on the line in Preston, which contributed to the train disruption. He arrived in Birmingham at the hotel we were staying at very much in need of a drink and a meal, having not eaten all day.
2. I read that a number of tourists were evacuated from the hotel next to the building which caught on fire. They were evacuated but weren’t able to take their luggage and had left their passports and travel documents in the hotel. They were put up in another hotel, but still had to rebook their journey while awaiting replacement passports.
3. On Sunday, my daughter was on her way to her nursing shift when she walked round the corner and saw Central Station on fire and her bus route cordoned off. There was an ‘Old Firm’ football match happening, so there were very few taxis. She luckily found a colleague and they eventually managed to get an Uber together to the hospital where she works.
4. Her friend usually takes the bus to work from Kilmacolm to Glasgow to go to college and to work. She was complaining that the buses were massively busy as everyone who would have commuted by train to Glasgow was now taking the bus, and that she had to stand and people didn’t understand ‘bus etiquette’.

These are just a few of the stories from the fire and the impact it has had on people’s lives. The impact is an inconvenience rather than the kind of impact felt by the people who have lost their businesses and livelihoods. I think in disasters, we must always remember the human impact these events have on people. As the impact ripples outward, more and more people are affected; as the ripples diminish, the impact is less, though it is still felt. Much of the impact is unseen and maybe unheard by the person it affects, but it’s there. A good incident manager will anticipate the impact on those affected within their control, take steps to mitigate the impact, and communicate with empathy that they are aware of the effect the incident is having on them.