Deep Dive: An Interview with Sam Johnson

We have, through this conversation, talked about weather.

[laughs] So I know that Europe is experiencing a heat wave, and temperatures almost went to 100 degrees.

Is that correct? 36.4 degrees Celsius.

Yeah.

Times that.

So 98, 99 degrees Fahrenheit, and you're gonna experience another heat wave again in July, and you said at the beginning of this, people start jumping in the water.

They're, they're, they're hot, and you've had a lot more drownings.

So w- what can you say about climate change? I know that Mike Tipton has r- been responsible for a conference called Climate Change and Health.

Um, and should this be part of your framework, climate change resilience and how we teach adaptability for floods? 'Cause we've had that here.

We've had fires, floods, all kinds of situations.

I think that is a fantastic idea about that future iteration, and I think to date the framework's been quite, um, purist in a sense.

It's really focused in on, in the broadest sense, water safety.

But it, when you broaden it out to all of drowning prevention and that broader look, I 100% agree that climate change piece is really important.

And if, um, as is the case in Europe, we're gonna see more frequent h- um, extreme weather events, so whether that's, you know, in, in the UK that might, that be be storms through the winter.

It could be flooding in the autumn, and it could be heat waves in the, in the summer.

We need to prepare our population for just that.

Um, so, s- so yes, in effect.

Um, at the moment we're, we as a sector are still really adapting to how our response is during those, like the heat wave of just last week.

Um, so we, we actually downed tools, uh, last Monday.

Uh, what was that on? Um, about seven or eight days ago.

And we said, "Look, we need to write to every school in the country," 'cause it's about to reach a temperature it's never reached before.

Schools are gonna potentially close right in the middle of this heat wave, and we're going to be letting children, um, of all ages out, um, potentially not to be supervised by their parents.

So we took the decision last week that we were going to try and re- remove as much red tape to email all the schools in the country, and we, um, working with a, um, a trusted partner.

The, the RNLI emailed 98% of the s- schools, um, last week with some key messaging, again, connected back to Mike Tipton's work around cold water shock, um, s- the water safety code, and then some key things that a teacher can do, uh, ahead of the end of term.

So yes, this is something that's gonna definitely get worse in Europe, but I think one thing to reflect on is this is already been something that some countries have been experiencing for decades, and you only need to look at certain island nations, um, you know, places in, in less developed countries are, are disproportionately being affected by this.