ARICHAT: The municipality is working to provide regular reports following storms.
Two weeks ago, Warden Amanda Mombourquette said she and Chief Administrative Officer Don Marchand met with Emergency Management Coordinator Cecil Frost to discuss the municipality’s emergency plan, the location of comfort stations and to identify which facilities have back-up power.
“When it came down to storm reporting though, I thought Cecil Frost, our EMC, I thought he had some really great insight there,” she told council. “We had a really productive conversation around capturing information but not trying to district staff from dealing with an emergency situation. What we talked about was post-event strategy, not during an emergency but after an emergency.”
The warden said Frost suggested adding a form to the emergency plan or to Bylaw 5 that would capture key data like the agencies involved in the response, the number of people accessing shelters, the times shelters were open, if they require back-up power, as well as the use of internal resources.
“The recent opening of the comfort centre in St. George’s Channel and as a municipally designed comfort centre, (Frost) had to go and check out the premises,” she noted. “Just to make sure that there were safety concerns that were addressed upon entering and exiting.”
Mombourquette said the consensus from the meeting was to emphasize the collection of necessary information.
“Whatever we would need to be able to identify areas for improvement, and also trends,” she noted. “I don’t think our storm reporting is going to get less, it’s going to get a whole lot more as our climate continues to evolve.”
Council agreed to Mombourquette’s suggestion to refer the creation of a storm report form to the Bylaw and Policy Committee, working in collaboration with the Emergency Management Advisory Committee.
The warden said the emergency broadcast system in place at Telile is now part of the national public alerting system which enables emergency management organizations to warn the public about imminent dangers such as floods, hazardous materials, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, and amber alerts.
“It’s really fantastic to have these potentially life-saving warnings available in our area. They are area specific, geotargetted and the type you would get, I think typically that you would get on your smartphone as well. When an alert is issued, it’s broadcast on TV and radio as well.”
Mombourquette added that this could be integrated into the municipality’s emergency plan.