Ten minutes after Thomas Cook Holidays chiefs heard about the coach crash in South Africa that killed 26 UK tourists, the operator’s crisis-management policy swung into action.
All of the tourists that died were on the operator’s Best of South Africa tour.
Staff were mobilised by the operator’s director and general manager Simon Laxton who divided them into teams to deal with different aspects of the crisis.
But many of those whose grim task was to let relatives know of the deaths were overwhelmed with grief as the operation started. Staff who had to inform relatives of the 26 dead received counselling to help them deal with the trauma.
“Our team dealing with next-of-kin are trained in counselling but they were fairly affected by it all,” said Laxton.
One Thomas Cook Holidays staff member had to deal with six next-of-kin affected by the tragedy and the operator said it ensured that relatives only ever dealt with the same person. All staff and next-of-kin also had the back-up of professional counselling service Crisis Care.
Laxton also put together other teams including a hotline task force who had to deal with calls from the public.
Laxton said: “At its height, we had 16 people answering the phone. We didn’t know how many calls we would get and it was a learning curve for our crisis-management policy. About 3,000 people called, mainly after the Six O’Clock news, but only a tiny amount were related to people in the incident.”
Laxton also had to liaise with South African Airways to send out relatives and with Thomas Cook Holidays representatives, to bring back survivors. A team was also mobilised in South Africa to deal with the hospitals to arrange for the return of the deceased. A forensic scientist and funeral director were also flown over.