“We planned for the unexpected.” Gérald Darmanin’s statement before the Senate Law Committee at the beginning of March sums up the extent of the security issues surrounding the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the preparations for which are coming to an end: there remain, Thursday April 18, less than 100 days before their opening on July 26. France, like all host countries, must anticipate all the threats that could spoil the party, including those that no one had thought of.
The authorities fear, of course, incidents occurring directly during the competitions or the opening ceremony. But also concomitant problems, explained the Minister of the Interior to the Senate, as “a migration crisis, megafires, terrorist attacks” not directly affecting the Olympic sites, but which would put pressure on the vast system put in place to secure the Games. This is why numerous configurations have been simulated over the past year as part of test eventscrisis exercises.
If these scenarios have already been practiced on other occasions, the entire country has gone into “crisis management” mode in the run-up to the Games. An event of unprecedented scale, which Pierre Rabadan, the JO man of the City of Paris, summarizes as follows: “Thirty-two world championships in two weeks in the same geographical area.” In total, around a hundred tests were carried out, ranging from a simple tabletop exercise to a full-scale staging, assesses the General Secretariat of Defense and National Security (SGDSN), responsible for piloting the majority of these training sessions. .
Simulations that can last 48 hours
To build the intrigue of these exercises, it was necessary to combine the French risk culture and that imported by the Olympic Organizing Committee (IOC), which arrives with its own “contingency diagram” inherited from previous editions, explains the Interministerial Delegation to the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Dijop). Attacks at the Games in Munich (1972) and Atlanta (1996), demonstrations around the Beijing Games (2008), a global pandemic during the competition in Tokyo (2021)… There is no shortage of precedents. France is not to be outdone, with its own domestic context, marked by a high terrorist threat, the possibility of large-scale social movements and a growing risk of cyberattacks. The General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) explains that it has set up an Olympic Intelligence Center in order to identify and map all the risks and threats weighing on the Games.
From these elements, the various partners (Paris 2024, the Ministry of the Interior, the Paris police headquarters, the Paris City Hall, the prefectures, the public prosecutor’s offices, but also the emergency services and the transporters) placed around the table to “pretend”. Exercises simulating major crises were organized at several sites in Ile-de-France, where most of the events will take place. At the beginning of December, the actors simulated over 48 hours a nightmare scenario supposed to take place on the day of the opening ceremony and the next day: a cyberattack which paralyzes transport in the middle of a heatwave, while demonstrations disrupt traffic.
The second round must take place on May 15 and 16, with, again, “various incidents to test the entire operational chain”of which “foodborne epidemics”, explains Didier Talbot, member of the State Crisis Preparedness office of the SGDSN. About 600 “players” will participate. “We start the timer at 8 o’clock. Only the organizers know the scenario.”he explains.
“We try to prepare for all eventualities and be efficient in the coordination and circulation of information. This reflects the exceptional side of the event, the largest we have ever organized.”
Pierre Rabadan, deputy to the City of Paris in charge of the Gamesat franceinfo
According to our information, the Directorate General for Foreigners imagined, during a tabletop exercise, the arrival of a boat of migrants in an area where the flame passes. At the beginning of April, an air attack was simulated from the command center of the Paris police headquarters. The latter also staged, last spring, an accident at the Parc des Princes during a Games football match. At the same period, a terrorist attack was simulated at the Stade de France, and a collapse of the stands was reproduced in the Paris La Défense Arena, in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), which will host the Olympic pool. In the fall, Roland-Garros was the scene of a false chemical attack.
“The entire chain is tested”
As the Games take place throughout the country, training also takes place far from Paris. The SNCF thus orchestrated the false derailment of a train in the middle of the night in Nantes, at the end of March, with nearly 400 participants and extras. In the Rhône, the police and emergency services mimed an intervention during a mass killing at the Décines-Charpieu stadium, near Lyon, which will host eleven football matches this summer. “The entire chain is tested, from the arrest of the perpetrators to informing the public”details the department prefecture, specifying that local residents received an alert on their phone in order to involve them. “We have learned a lot since the 2015 attacksnotes Didier Talbot, of the SGDSN. We have developed a lot of intervention doctrines.”
Despite the seriousness of the scripts, the experience can remain “playful” in order to “dedramatize”, confide several participants. The objective is to put each actor to the test by introducing destabilizing details: circulation of false information, prosecutor blocked on the highway when he is supposed to go to the scene, ambulance accident… As reported by AFP a participant in the simulated collapse of a stand at the Paris La Défense Arena, “It’s an exercise that puts us in conditions as close as possible to reality, which allows us to surpass ourselves to be ready on D-day, even if we hope that day never arrives”. At the Interministerial Delegation for the Games, we invite you not to fall into psychosis: “We must not imagine that the twelve plagues of Egypt are going to fall on us because these are the Games.”
Have a plan, and know how to modify it
These exercises aim above all to test coordination and communication between the numerous actors involved, a French specificity. “There is a mille-feuille side, but an engineering that does not exist anywhere else. It was a challenge for the organizing committee [du CIO], they had never worked so closely with a State”, slides a source in Matignon. After each exercise, feedback is organized both hot and cold, and each participant leaves with their lessons learned. “For the prosecution, this is an opportunity to remind people that the judicial investigation does not follow the crisis, but is concomitant with it”illustrates a judicial source. “This allows you to identify the holes in the racket to save time in reality, so that you only have to unroll the plan, explains the spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior, Camille Chaize. And to qualify: “You must always remain flexible. In crisis management, we say that there is ‘the plan, and how we adapt the plan’.”
“Today, the big traps are in the blind spot”, agrees Patrick Lagadec, honorary research director at Polytechnique, specialist in crisis management. According to him, France must still develop a “grammar of surprise” in this domain. “You have to ask yourself: ‘What could be totally mind-blowing? That doesn’t mean the worst, but the most surprising.’he elaborates, inviting “get out of rationality”.
“The crisis is the destruction of references. Otherwise, it’s emergency management.”
Patrick Lagadec, crisis management specialistat franceinfo
In a report (PDF file) published in April 2023, the Institute of Advanced National Defense Studies believes that the Games can “provide an opportunity to develop the culture of crisis management in France”. “The knowledge that the country will store is quite monumental, it is an understatement to say that in view of everything that has been undertaken”, we observe in Matignon. At the top of the state, some nevertheless hope that all these exercises will prove superfluous: “The crisis management professional is someone who works a lot hoping that their work will never be useful.”