Ucluelet’s fire hall was packed on May 4 as the West Coast collaborated in a mock extreme weather event as part of a Joint Regional Emergency Operations Centre exercise.
“The team did really well. It was very smooth. The goal always in these exercises is to learn and so at the end of the day we did a good wrap up of things we did great and areas for improvement, of course, and that’s where the real learning takes place,” Ucluelet Fire Chief Rick Geddes told the Westerly News.
“Now we can take back all this knowledge and notes that we gathered throughout the day and incorporate them into our emergency plans and how we respond to significant events.”
The exercise included participation from the districts of Ucluelet and Tofino as well as the Yuułuʔiłʔatḥt and Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations, RCMP and BC Ambulance Service personnel.
“Out on the Coast, we face a lot of the same hazards. We have challenges with resources and in how we use those resources so it’s critical that we all work together to use them efficiently and effectively and communicate with our neighbours who are going through the same thing and see if we can support each other,” Tofino’s emergency operations centre director Keith Orchiston told the Westerly during the exercise. “Probably the most important part of the emergency planning process is just the communications part.”
He added it was the first time the West Coast’s emergency response teams had worked together face-to -face since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Today is going great. It’s been a while since we’ve done this in person. We had some challenges meeting in person with COVID. Coming out of that now and being able to actually do this in person adds a different dimension and more realism to the event than doing it via Zoom. Today has been great just being able to coordinate and communicate with our counterparts in different communities. The level of involvement we’ve got here today is awesome and I’m super appreciative of all the different participants.”
Geddes agreed, adding that the event provided an opportunity for various governments to get an understanding of each community’s resources.
“The biggest thing is probably information and resource sharing so we can better understand in an emergency what resources we have and what some gaps are,” he said.
The teams worked together to respond to the mock emergency with various injects being added throughout the exercise.
“The turnout was overwhelming. It was amazing. It was a great day to see everybody working so hard and enjoying it at the end of the day too. There was a lot of thought put into the exercise and the injects and it seemed to work well as far as pace,” he said. “We want to test our capabilities, but also in learning we don’t want to overwhelm people. We want to set them up for success, so it was important to stage all the injects appropriately as far as timing and realism. It was really nice to see people working through some of these problems that might be on the extreme end, but by the end of the day we were able to put all our minds together and figure out how to work though. It was a great day.”
Ucluelet’s new RCMP detachment commander Sgt. Marc Jones said it’s vital for all the relevant agencies tasked with responding to an emergency to be able to work together effectively to coordinate a strong response.
“It’s extremely important,” he said. “It was an excellent exercise and we appreciate the offer to participate in it.”
He commended Geddes for his work coordinating the event and said he was impressed by the team’s collaborative effectiveness.
“These are the people that I’d be working with when it comes time to respond to an emergency if one should happen, so it was really great to develop those connections and relationships so we each know how each of us works and who we need to be contacting,” he said. “They were all very professional. It was a great crew to work with and I was very impressed…It was an excellent exercise. I hope they do it again. That way we can maybe refine things a bit more and try different ideas.”
Geddes added that the provincial government has done “a really great job” of promoting emergency preparedness to residents throughout the province and that residents must take the opportunity to get prepared.
“We don’t have the resources to get to everybody, so it’s really important that people are prepared by knowing your nearest community assembly area if you have to evacuate, having a grab and go bags ready, having an emergency contacts list and just being ready,” he said. “It’s so important to know the local hazards. We’re really trying to not only increase the local knowledge of the hazards but also our tourists because we have such a high dependence on tourists and it’s a great place to come so we really want to get the word out to tourists.”
Anyone looking for more information on how to get prepared is encouraged to visit preparedbc.ca.
Thursday’s Joint Regional Emergency Operations Centre exercise took about eight months to put together, including grant writing and engaging with a consultant to design a realistic emergency event.
“We wanted to make it as real and lifelike as possible,” he said, adding he hopes to organize similar exercises in the future. “There’s so much value…If we were able to do something like this every couple years, it would be really beneficial and really set us up for when the big one happens.”
andrew.bailey@westerlynews.ca
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