Quesnel Looks at Possible Changes to How Emergencies are Handled
Quesnel, B.C.- Although the wildfire season is far from over and there are some who fear it will become worse before it gets better, the Mayor of Quesnel is suggesting there may be a case to re-think how such emergencies are handled.
Mayor Bob Simpson says while Quesnel has not yet had to activate its Emergency Operations centre during the current crisis, Emergency Management Committee meetings were being held daily to keep track of the situation and to learn .
One of the areas Mayor Simpson would like to see pursued is the possibility of breaking up the Cariboo-Chilcotin into sub regions for emergency management “The Cariboo -Chilcotin is a huge area” says Simpson who adds local knowledge of the specific areas might have been helpful in reducing some confusion. Case in point, the Green Mountain fire, which was originally labelled the Dragon Mountain fire. Simpson says those living near Dragon Mountain were concerned about their properties, when in fact, the actual fire was happening on Green Mountain. “I certainly believe we could have avoided a lot of the confusion created during this most recent emergency if we had been able to make more direct decisions here in the North Cariboo base on more local knowledge of our situation and our geography.”
Simpson also points out Quesnel is linked to Northern Health, not Interior Health as is the case in Williams Lake and areas south of that city.
To add to Quesnel’s case is the fact it has a permanent Wildfire Branch base at the Airport and the Ministry of Transportation has its own office in Quesnel.
Simpson says Quesnel will collect all of the lessons learned from the other communities impacted by this season’s wildfire activity, including Prince George and Kamloops which were host cities for evacuees. He says the information will be presented to Quesnel Council later this summer with the hopes of getting approval to work with an emergency management specialist in the development of a “comprehensive and detailed plan” the City of Quesnel can use should there be a wildfire emergency in the future.
Comments
In my opinion the whole damn thing needs to be reviewed! The PG Fire Centre is large as it is but Quesnel should be apart of the PG Fire Centre. Quesnel is stuck between two cities and they could have helped out with the evacuations too, the highway was not closed between PG and Quesnel. Quesnel was left out! I get there is more in PG and we handled it great but don’t leave a city out that has potential to help out. The closest fire burning near Quesnel is 100 km west of it. For those who evacuated early from Williams Lake before the order came out could have stayed in Quesnel and some could have made it a bit further and stayed here. Next time use all available resources and not just half because one city is bigger than the other. That is a bad excuse.
We are not prepared for any disaster until it happens. That’s the sad part. The mayor of a city that was left out of a huge incident would be disappointed no one turned to them for help.
Some consideration should be given to utilizing people in the various communities to help fight these fires. Seems to me that we have a situation where hundreds if not thousands of able bodied men are sitting around waiting for the fires to be put out by **professionals**. These people could be put on the fire lines in some areas to help contain the fires. That’s how these fires were fought back in the day and it seemed to be as effective an approach as we now have.
We could have people in the communities trained to fight fires and pay them to do so, that way we have people in the different areas ready and able to respond to fires immediately.
In any event I agree that the whole process should be reviewed.
On the other hand the way things are burning, and getting killed by pine/spruce beetles/clear cutting, etc; perhaps our forests are in their twilight years.
I don’t know if this is urban legend or not but I heard a long time ago, officials would walk into bars and taverns in the afternoon and if you were sitting in there drinking beer and you didn’t have a job, you were sent to fight fires.
Based on the new realities of drier forests and possibly larger fires, maybe mandatory fire training for EI recipients and maybe put them all on mop up duty until they can find work. Certainly adds a couple of lines of job experience to their resumes.
You got that right. It is a fact that’s how fire control people were recruited in local bars. I was never recruited but I know of people that were. Fact is I never had time to drink beer in a bar.
Cheers
I’d rather not have to supervise people that are likely to be (at best) liabilities. As far as people who are on EI and actually WANT to work- absolutely. The “conscript from the bar” days are long over, and for good reason.
I was under the impression they did away with locals fighting local fires because it eliminated the arson for work problem that was happening in some locations… so the policy of backing up a bus at the local bar and drafting firefighters by court order was stopped, and a new policy of bringing in fire fighters from further away communities was implimented, thus not allowing locals to fight their own fires and get paid for it was a step to prevent deliberate arson for work.
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