Safety and security – A team sport

27 Mar 2024

Written by Abigail Trewin AM, Director of Education

AUSMAT security is a responsibility that falls on everyone. AUSMAT does not deploy passengers; it deploys active team members. As a team member, your role is diverse, complex and demanding. The security of the team, equipment, and patients is paramount to ensure that we meet our mission goals and return home safely.

To jog your memory of AUSMAT Team Member training, consider the following few questions…

What steps should you personally take before deployment? What goes in your grab bag?
How do you position your clothes overnight so you can evacuate or respond without struggling to dress or safeguard footwear from snakes, spiders or other pests?
Have you identified the most significant risk to your personal safety within the camp? Remembering low light brings with it the concealment of threats.
How will you safely access the toilets at night, where do you keep your head torch while you are sleeping? Where is the greatest risk to your personal security within the camp, noting the potential for assault in low-light environments?
How about remembering the details of convoy driving?
Could you instruct a local driver on the AUSMAT expectations regarding speed, planning, communication, and “actions on”?
Where will you sit in the vehicle, and what checks will you perform before you leave camp?
Who will you tell where you are going and what route planning will happen before you leave?

Security on mission starts before you leave Australia. The National Critical Care Trauma and Response Centre (NCCTRC) recently ran a Workshop for AUSMAT Security Focal Points in Darwin. The workshop was designed for logistics personnel to enhance their role as security focal points, providing essential support to the leadership and team members during deployments.

This training opportunity has been created to utilise the skills and expertise of domestic emergency management participants, who are all firefighters and regularly make important safety decisions in their day to day work. The training aims to aid AUSMAT logistics in preparing security plans for deployments and considers the added complexity of international security risk management practices, which differ from those employed by full-time specialists working for United Nations (UN) agencies, Non-government organisations (NGOs), and rapid response teams worldwide.

Security is a team sport, and while our AUSMAT logistics personnel focus on operational security during deployment, our commonwealth colleagues in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and National Emergency Management Australia (NEMA) remain responsible for overarching security decisions, detailed information to maintain our situational awareness and critical operational support in the field to reduce security risk.

The course methodology emphasised practical exercises, real-life case studies, and two field simulations. The course follows ISO 31000. The standard explains the fundamental concepts and principles of risk management while describing a framework and outlining processes for identifying and managing risk.

The next security course is scheduled for June 2024. An expression of interest will be circulated soon for team leaders to equip them with the necessary skills to support and evaluate security plans, actions, risk management and crisis management during deployments.

But before we get to that… how did your answers to the questions fair?

What goes in your grab bag?

Critical items that would allow you to leave in a hurry (pen, garbage bag, passports, identity documents, visa documents, personal medications, snacks, water, clean pair of socks, underpants, t-shirt if you can fit it, torch, water purification tablets, hand sanitiser, money (USD and local currency), valuable items, map, GPS unit if relevant, personal spot tracker, phone and charger. Also, consider cultural items that may be critical, such as a scarf or sarong.

How do you position your clothes overnight so you can evacuate or respond without struggling to dress and safeguard footwear from snakes, spiders or other pests?

Putting your shoes under your bed in your mosquito dome stuffed with socks is a good start. You know where they are, and they are ready for a quick exit.
Fold your clothes and place them on the bag next to your bed – inside your tent with your head torch on top or hang it inside your mosquito net for a reading light and quick grab and go.
Have you considered the clothes you sleep in? Can you evacuate in these items or do you need pull-on trousers before you move?

If you are consistent and can lay your hands on essential items in the middle of the night, you are doing it right; speed is the key when you are exhausted!

Have you identified the most significant risk to your personal safety within the camp?

Have you considered how you will access the toilets to ensure team safety, and where your head torch is kept during the night? Remembering that low light brings with it the concealment of threats. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for AUSMAT is a buddy system… no traversing the toilets at night without a buddy. We know this is our most significant risk area, and as such, Logistics have advanced our capability with toilets that incinerate –to place them close to the team, particularly in the first few days of set up.

How about remembering the details of convoy driving? Could you instruct a local driver on the AUSMAT expectations regarding speed, planning, communication, and "actions on"? Where will you sit in the vehicle and what checks will you perform before you leave camp? Who will you tell where you are going and what route planning will happen before you leave?

Trip Planning:

When travelling with groups of vehicles, the power of planning is not only knowing what to do and conveying that information to other people, but also to anticipate and limit potential failure points.

Read through a simple trip plan and consider practising this on your next road trip with family or friends.

OSMEAC:

Orientation– Provide a rough overview of the area to the group. It may require lat/long readings, secondary routes, areas of risk, no go areas, specific towns or cities you will travel through. “We’ll be travelling to the city of Ubisse, Moreland, on mostly these roads.”
Situation– “You don’t know how to get to the Ubisse, so we will be reliant on our National Driver, and we need to maintain a convoy at all times.
Mission– Set out the major goal of travelling to the location. “We need to get to the Ubisse by 8 PM to make it on time for camp set up, while also ensuring you don’t get lost along the way.”
Execution– Discuss the actual travel plans and what to do in special circumstances.
- “We’re going to take this road to this road. If you get pulled over, I’ll proceed to the next fuel station on the left side and wait.
- Who is watching the last vehicle to ensure they are not lost
- What to do if the convoy is broken
- Who is to sit where in the vehicle – Team leads, navigators, team members – remembering your arc of visibility while in a car and what you are responsible for observing.

- Standards for all vehicles, speed 80kmhr, Lights should be on, and the trip meter should be zeroed.
Admin & logistics
- Some things you may want to double-check are vehicle inspections, road worthiness, driver’s licenses, etc.
- “Does everyone have everything they need?
- Location of Grab bags, phone, fuel, keys spare tyre and recovery equipment, signage on the vehicle if needed. Official documents in each vehicle.
Communication– Discuss how to communicate with members of the group, both electronic and otherwise. “My phone number is ___. Two rapid honks means ___.”

Communication:

While you’ll most likely be able to use cell phones, you can also use series of headlight flashes or bursts of car horn. In addition, because they’re not reliant on communication towers or other intermediary stops, handheld radios are always ready to receive transmissions as long as the batteries are powered.

Actions on convoy

Thinking about what can go wrong and what the course of action will be, is critical for all team members to be aware and ready to initiate.

Vehicle In-between your convoy

You’re following a vehicle with a normal distance between your cars and a person decides the space between looks like a great spot to shoehorn their car into. What should you do?

Your lead vehicle should take their foot off the accelerator to slow the vehicle gradually (don’t pump the brakes and risk causing an accident.) Hopefully, as this makes the traffic on either side of you start moving more quickly than your lane, it will entice the intruding vehicle to change lanes.

Multiple intruding vehicles in convoy or loss of visual of vehicle in front of you

As you’re travelling along, something happens to allow multiple vehicles between you and the car in front of you, or you’ve lost sight of the vehicle you were following.

To regroup and return to normal, the lead vehicle should remain in the same lane but drive at a decreased speed, making a large space in front of their vehicle. The rear vehicle should change lanes to get in front of lead vehicle. Once this is complete, the process should be repeated to put the lead vehicle back in front of the convoy.

Dealing with traffic lights and stop signs

While travelling, your convoy approaches a Red Traffic light or stop sign.

The lead vehicle should stop at all yellow lights to limit the chance of separating the vehicles. When turning at stop signs, the lead vehicle should judge the traffic and make the turn only when enough time and space allows for each following vehicle to stop and make the turn without unknown cars entering.

Changing lanes in traffic

You’re the rear vehicle of a four vehicle convoy. There’s traffic all around you and you need to get over to the right lane to make your exit in two miles.

A good option for changing lanes in a convoy is a blocking technique. The lead vehicle sees the exit sign and uses his turn indicator to signal the rest of the convoy of the lane change. This signal is relayed down the line to you in the rear.

Your job is to be the first one to change into the lane the convoy needs to move to. From there, you’ll slow down enough to allow your lead vehicle to enter the lane in front of you. This process is repeated until the convoy has changed into the desired lane.

Abigail Trewin AM
Director of Education

Abigail Trewin's career spans various domains within Paramedicine, disaster management and emergency response. As a registered Intensive Care Paramedic for 15 years. She has since assumed key roles in Government Health Departments for over a decade. Her responsibilities encompass interpreting and operationalising global health standards for the Australian government's disaster response capabilities. She has led collaboration with Ministries of Health in multiple countries, including Indonesia, Fiji, Thailand, and South Korea, to apply WHO global emergency health standards. She is a WHO mentor, trainer and EMT verification member Working for the WHO in Geneva 2018 as the senior technical officer of the Emergency Medical Team program. Abigail was instrumental in developing the Australian training program for a multidisciplinary healthcare workforce responding to Disasters . In her operational roles, Abigail has responded to numerous large-scale Australian Government disaster healthcare responses, Pakistan floods in 2010, Philippines Typhoon Haiyan, AUSMAT Mission Lead for multidisciplinary healthcare teams in Fiji Cyclone Winston, Samoa Measles outbreak, Aged Care Crisis and Artania vessel crisis. Her experience included managing infectious disease responses and establishing and running Australia's first Quarantine facility, The Centre for National Resilience in 2020 through to June 2021, supporting 6000 returning Australians. She was also an Executive Director and State Health Command for the quarantine program run by the Victorian Government, overseeing and effectively managing the care and well-being of over 10,000 quarantined individuals distributed across 15 sites and a workforce of 3,000 dedicated staff.