Korean crisis may test Singapore's National Emergency System (NEST)

Job done for the day, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) sergeant glanced at his work station one last time. What he saw on plasma screen displays would tell him the fastest way to get home on his motorbike because the multiple screens indicated the traffic situation all across Singapore island in real-time.

With his route home plotted out in his mind, the sergeant waved goodbye to his relief shift before making his way past the vault-like steel doors, then up tens of metres by stairs and elevator to surface level where he emerged in an ordinary looking parking lot.

What it concealed deep beneath ground level was far from ordinary.

This was Basement 3 of one of the SCDF's most prized facilities: an underground command complex that is at the heart of the city-state's National Emergency System (NEST).

If things get hot on the Korean peninsula, Singaporeans entrusted with NEST are under no illusions the Lion City's national emergency drawer plans may be put to the test.

Trouble in North Asia may disrupt or delay trade movements by air and ship, and may catch import-dependent economies wrong-footed unless they have stockpiles of essential items.

The NEST checklist reads like a doomsday survivalist's manifest, but upsized enormously to protect and save Singapore's population of more than 5 million should the worst happen, whether due to natural or man-made calamities.

Food security, energy security and the continued running of essential services such as fresh water, electricity and transport are among items addressed under NEST. And these are more than just paper plans.

Several times a year, key building blocks of NEST are put to the test under a nationwide initiative titled (somewhat unimaginatively) MONOC. It stands for Maintenance Of Nest Operational Capability. These emergency preparedness exercises bring together professionals from Home Team agencies like civil defence, police and immigration, the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) as well as companies that manage essential services to test out emergency plans.

What may have sounded paranoid during peaceful times now look like sensible precautions that toughen up our island nation during uncertain times.

The security of rice - a food staple for Singaporeans of all races - is an example of the extent that the Singapore government is prepared to go to protect the wellbeing of its people. Warehouses at several locations around Singapore ensure that Singaporeans will have more than two months' supply of the grain, even if food ships cannot reach our shores. If rationing is imposed, that rice stockpile should stretch several weeks longer.

The energy stockpile, sufficient to keep our island's generators humming for a double-digit duration in days, is insurance against any disruptions in fuel supply for our power stations.

In the SCDF's Basement 3, each peacetime shift of around 10 operators is kept busy with or without the crisis in Korea or (name your regional hotspot).

Over a span of 24 hours, Basement 3 would have answered around 1,000 phone calls for emergency services. For all their effort, about 5 per cent of the calls turn out to be false alarms.

Every call is logged, tracked and assessed to ensure the service standard of getting a fire appliance out on the road within one minute and to the scene of emergency around eight minutes later can be maintained, round the clock, all year round.

Here's where the traffic monitoring desk pays dividends. It allows SCDF despatchers to activate the fire station or smaller fire post closest to the scene of incident. It also indicates every fire hydrant in the vicinity and is smart enough to alert despatchers when multiple calls for the same emergency, observed by different people, flood the 995 emergency number.

The command and control system was developed by Singaporean defence engineers from Singapore Technologies Electronics more than 10 years ago under Project Cubicon.

It gives SCDF crisis managers an island-wide view of Singaporens in trouble, day and night, with the help of multiple wall and desk mounted screens.

Cubicon dutifuly logs and displays every request to put out a fire, every call for an ambulance crew, all reported road traffic accidents and displays movements of all SCDF emergency vehicles as these life-savers are tracked by satellite.

Basement 3 is built for peace, troubled peace and war. The hardened facility, encased underground in reinforced concrete and steel to protect it from air attack, has more office space than is required for peacetime situations.

Another part of the room is responsible for more than 250 sirens that form Singapore's Public Warning System (PWS) to alert Singaporeans to tune in for emergency broadcasts, warn of impending air/missile attack or sound the all-clear.

One the first day of every month at precisely 12 noon, every siren sounds a 20-second melody. To the uninitiated, this melody may not mean anything. But civil defence engineers at strategic parts of the island use the chime to test if sirens are ready for duty.

The PWS also has a long genesis. It was commissioned more than two decades ago in 1991 and builds on plans laid in the mid-1980s that recommended several measures to harden Singapore against air raids.

To keep the network running 24/7, engineers are rostered to service around seven PWS sirens every day. Crisis planners have also built in several fail-safes to ensure that the sirens will blare when they have to. Each siren is powered by electricity from the national grid and has a back-up battery. The system to sound the siren comprises landlines and radio back-up.

This long-term approach to national emergency preparedness planning could be better appreciated by the average Singaporean as we live in a country better prepared than most for crisis situations.

It is a wake-up call one hopes Singaporeans will not be forced to heed.

When that wake-up call arrives, NEST will be ready. What about you?