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Bordering on Reality: Findings on the Bonfire Crisis Management Simulation

On 6 April 2005 a national crisis management simulation, code named Bonfire, was held at various locations in the Netherlands. The Bonfire scenario was built around a terrorist threat followed by an actual attack in the Amsterdam ArenA and a hostage-taking. Bonfire's scale and realism made it unique for the Netherlands. Its complexity led to unplanned incidents that actually made it even more realistic, because this is something that occurs in every crisis situation. This evaluation shows that the co-ordination, internal provision of information and crisis communication - the three core elements of crisis management discussed in this report - were mainly in the hands of the decision-makers themselves. This put so much pressure on them that they were rarely able to make strategic decisions for the medium or long term. Support staff had been expected to ease pressure on the leadership by preparing their meetings and working out the results. This did not go as planned, however. Since they did not always have access to the latest information, they could not provide optimum support. As a result, they were by-passed, so that they had even less access to information. The vicious circle was thus complete. It was observed that new counter-terrorism structures installed in the Netherlands after '9-11' functioned as foreseen, but that decision-making required the input of far more parties than had been envisaged. In the course of the operations, therefore, the various levels established a more or less spontaneous link with the standard crisis management structures.