March 2018 convoy and a thought about incident response.

Convoy at Glencorse March 2018

A nuclear weapons convoy left AWE Burghfield on Thursday March 22. It was later seen on the A1 at junction 49 near Dishforth (15 miles north of Wetherby).  The following day it was spotted crossing over to the west on the A66 and then on the M74 just south of Lesmahagow. It then continued around the east of Glasgow on the M73 and past Cumbernauld on the M80 to take a break at DSG Stirling mid-afternoon. It then took the M9, A811 and A82 to RNAD Coulport.

On Monday March 26 this convoy left Coulport to return south. Taking a route through Balloch and Stirling then onto the M9 and M8 to the Edinburgh bypass it then took a break at Glencorse Barracks in Penicuik. After continuing south on the A1 passing Berwick on Tweed it passed through Newcastle and after an overnight stop it then continued down the A1. It crossed country to the A34 travelling around Oxford and getting back to Burghfield around 5pm.

Meanwhile a message from Nukewatchers in Scotland…..

The Kerslake Report on the Manchester Arena bombing last year was published this week with its criticism of poor inter-agency working and communication failures. The last publicised exercise testing multi-agency responses to a nuclear convoy accident was in 2011 and the follow-up report noted poor inter-agency working and poor communication. The Scottish councils through which convoys regularly pass were asked in a 2016 survey whether they had adjusted their policies or procedures in the light of the 2011 report. They all said they had not. In the Manchester case there had at least been a recent exercise based on a terrorist scenario and involving all the relevant agencies but, as Kerslake himself has said, a simulation exercise is all very well but a real life situation provides its own unforeseeable challenges. All of which makes the title of the Nukewatch 2017 report “Unready Scotland” ever more accurate. In Scotland we are not ready to respond effectively to a serious nuclear weapon convoy incident and perhaps we never could be. Meanwhile the Scottish government, which has been well apprised of the serious deficits in readiness, has still not agreed to conduct a modest review of the response capacities of the civil authorities in Scotland. That is not good enough.

Please sign our petition asking the Scottish Government to take action.

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