Training and civil defense

Sean Donelan sean at donelan.com
Tue Oct 23 17:50:21 UTC 2001



The military tends to be more open about their activites
than private companies.  The Air Force public affairs office
put out this report how they kept the National Military
Command Center running during the crisis on September 11.

http://www.af.mil/news/Sep2001/n20010918_1305.shtml

The key thing to notice is the level of training and equipment
available to the personnel.  Although this involved the military,
you will see similar level of training among operators of chemical
plants and nuclear plants who need to stay at their posts while
safely shutting down the plant.  It is  not common among Internet
operators.

In general untrained people should stay out of the way, or evacuate.
It really isn't an issue of bravery, or volunteering to stay at
the helm of a sinking ship.  Untrained people are a risk to both
themselves and to other people around them.  If your aren't trained
how to handle bombs, hazardous materials, etc you should evacuate.

Evacuating your NOC, or colo or call center may be the best thing
to do during a crisis (hurricane, bombing, anthrax, etc).  But ISPs
should pre-plan how they will keep their network running in a
lights-out/unattended situation.  In addition, you should pre-plan
with your local emergency responders what they will do.  Very few
emergency responders have received training how to deal with an
a typical telephone CO or Internet exchange point.  I've talked
to fire departments in the Bay Area, and several of them are worried
about sending firefighters inside some Internet data centers in
an emergency.





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