Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Jun 13/01) - If ever there was a devastating flood or an encroaching forest fire, city hall says it's prepared.
Director of corporate affairs Tim Mercer attended the Emergency Operations Centre Management course in Arnprior, Ont., earlier this month.
The course is designed specifically for instructing municipalities from across the country on how to cope with emergencies.
Instruction techniques included scenarios based on real-life disasters.
"There was a mock city there based on Saskatoon called Collegeville," said Mercer.
"One scenario was a winter ice storm with a power outage at a shopping mall. We had to go through an evacuation and that sort of thing."
City staff are no stranger to mock disaster scenarios. In the year leading up to Y2K the city went through several strategy preparedness plans in the event of widespread power and computer failure.
"We had a plane crash into Jackfish Lake power plant," said Mercer.
"So we had casualties as well as power loss in the dead of winter."
Mercer says the most important lesson he learned while taking the course was the need for communicating with the public during a city-wide crisis.
"Often it's not the response itself that is problematic," said Mercer. "Often the problem is with communications."
"One of the strategies they suggested is having timely, concise press conferences."
Duplicate and confusing responses to the public during an emergency can worsen the crisis, Mercer explained.
The Emergency Operations Centre acts as city hall's nervous system in times of crisis. Even though it's rarely in use, it has been activated before.
"We had an issue when Norman Wells was evacuated in 1995 (because of a forest fire)," said Dave Nicklen, director of public safety and development. "Six hundred and fifty people were moved to Yellowknife and we had to find places for them to stay."
The Tibbitt Lake fire during the summer of 1998 was also one occasion when the city's emergency operations team was activated.
When confronted with a crisis the city's emergency operations committee quickly assembles at City Hall. The committee includes city staff, including Nicklen, as well the local fire chief and RCMP commander.
"Municipalities are the first level of response," said Nicklen.
"Under our emergency measures bylaw, it empowers the city to conscript anybody and city staff once a local state of emergency has been declared."
The city has yet to take any such measures.
