T 0.6 Environmental Disasters

A public body or a company can suffer damage when a serious accident happens in its environment, for instance, a fire, an explosion, a release of poisonous substances or a dangerous radiation leak. Therefore, the danger is not only due to the event itself but often to activities resulting there from, for example access restrictions and rescue measures.

The property of an institution can be exposed to a variety of threats originating from the environment, among other things from traffic (streets, rail, air, and water), neighbouring companies or residential areas.

Even preventative or rescue measures can affect the property directly. Such measures can also lead to a situation where employees cannot reach their workplace or staff must be evacuated. However, the complexity of site technical service and IT infrastructure can also give rise to indirect problems.

Examples:

• Due to a fire outbreak in a chemical plant in the immediate proximity of a computing centre (approx. 1000 m as the crow flies), a large cloud of smoke arose. The computing centre had an air conditioning and ventilation system which did not have any external air monitoring. Thanks only to the attention of an employee (the accident happened during working hours) who observed the emergence and spreading of the cloud, the external air supply could be manually switched off.