Thanks are due to ‘invisible’ heroes

Spare a thought in the pandemic for vital utility workers, says Ian Handford

AGOVERNMENT’S first priority is the security and safety of its citizens, and in Britain the Armed Forces defend the realm. However, today we are indebted to employees of the NHS, who, in essence, have become our first line of national defence against coronavirus. The disease dominates every aspect of our daily lives – an invisible enemy attacking humanity around the globe and which kills.

Accepting the NHS is now our new hero takes nothing away from the priority status of our Armed Forces, who protect all borders to keep us safe every day of the year. Yet it is right we spare a thought for a third army of employees working every day of the year to ensure our lifestyles remain intact.

The pandemic threatens the developed world, and priorities have changed, yet this third army of utility employees remains largely invisible and is rarely considered. Our lifestyles depend on their service, without which life would quickly be reminiscent of the hardship and struggle our ancestors suffered to survive, especially at times like the Black Death in the 14th century. We take it for granted that our drinking water, power sources, sewage and disposal services, and even communication systems, are always available, yet without any of them life would be very unpleasant indeed.

Utililty employees have to cope with natural disasters like floods and the like, which all threaten services. This employed army has to accept human error and occasional accidents, as witnessed by the pollution of Camelford, Cornwall, in 1988, which affected 20,000 people. It was a local catastrophe, although not many years afterwards there were national power cuts affecting millions.

My feature in the Western Morning News in December 2013, in which I wrote ‘It’s not just the lights going out that should worry us’, reported that politicians had voted to implement an EU Large Combustion Plant Directive which closed two of our largest power plants, reducing coal-fired capacity by 10% immediately, while only a week before we had learned the UK had just two days’ gas reserves.

Then in April 2019, a research paper saw a power company chief executive confirm that power cuts are “a once in 30-year event”, adding that “it was nothing to do with the fact that we are moving to more wind and solar power”, although now our dependency on wind and solar power has risen formidably.

To me, the greatest threat to our largest utilities comes from terrorism, or insane acts by hackers. These are people using ‘smart technology’, who usually work alone at home. Most are individuals, although sometimes the threats are inspired by a government agency.

Both seek to cause technical chaos, which in the worst scenario will kill people for reasons known only to the perpetrator. Often there seems to be no intention to blackmail, just a need to be in charge or all-powerful by accessing a defence system or utility service of a country. Public records show that an individual or agency of Iran frequently targets the water plants of Israel, while in America its intelligence agency is fully aware that for many years hackers have targeted the Swiss, Turkish and American power and water treatment plants and nuclear systems quite frequently. Modern so-called smart technology seeks to avoid national security systems by exposing a weakness so that it can then corrupt or delete computer programmes and cause massive disruption to a utility.

Thankfully, national security services around the globe constantly monitor all known terrorists, and indeed countries, seeking to harm other countries for whatever reason. When the drinking water of America’s Oldsmar Town was found to contain high quantities of sodium hydroxide – which is lethal in high doses – it was no accident, and when a local reporter asked the county sheriff whether it was a ‘bioterrorism’ attack, he learned simply, “It is what it is”. The sheriff could not know from whom or where the threat had come from, and for decades afterwards dozens of similar incidents were recorded.

So, to the many thousands of employees working in the water, gas, coal, oil and electricity industries, plus those in hydro, solar, wind and wave power, disposal or communication services, we at least can give them a huge thank you because, as with NHS employees, we are so very dependent upon their daily commitment.

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Thousands are working in the power industry and other utilities to keep our lifestyles intact