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How to Build an Ark Charmaigne Pflugrath, CEM, ABCP BCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019 There are well over 1,500 tales worldwide about a great flood. They may be myth, traditional stories, or historical truth. Whatever they are, the tales have been handed down from generation to generation. Included with these tales are thousands more stories about those who survived. These stories tell of what the survivors did before, during and after the great water came. 1

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Page 1: How to Build an Ark BCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019 ...€¦ · OH&S professionals are crucial to advocating and promoting employee preparedness and working with your emergency

How to Build an Ark

Charmaigne Pflugrath, CEM, ABCPBCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019

There are well over 1,500 tales worldwide about a great flood.

They may be myth, traditional stories, or historical truth.

Whatever they are, the tales have been handed down from generation to generation.

Included with these tales are thousands more stories about those who survived.

These stories tell of what the survivors did before, during and after the great water came.

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Charmaigne Pflugrath, CEM, ABCPBCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019

All of the survivor stories share some common themes. The themes of these stories align

with the foundations of Emergency Management.

• They did whatever possible to avoid or reduce the effects of the flood event

• They made the appropriate preparations in advance

• They made plans and developed strategies that were flexible.

• When the disaster came, they implemented and adapted their plans.

• After the disaster, they developed initiatives and adapted their actions to overcome

challenges.

• And finally, they used the experience and new knowledge to improve their future.

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Charmaigne Pflugrath, CEM, ABCPBCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019

Taken all together, the stories all share a single theme… resilience.

So, what is resilience?

In Emergency Management, there are a number of definitions of resilience. Disaster

resilience is part of the broader resilience concept and refers to ‘…the ability of individuals,

communities, and their institutions to absorb and recover from shocks, while positively

adapting and transforming their infrastructure, structures and means for living in the face

of long-term changes and uncertainty’.

Disaster resilience is determined by the degree to which individuals, communities, and

both private and public organizations are capable of learn from past disasters, organising

and preparing themselves and reducing their risks to future disasters at the individual,

local, regional, and national levels.

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Charmaigne Pflugrath, CEM, ABCPBCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019

The Emergency Program Act requires that local governments

• identify the potential hazards that could affect their municipality;

• prepare an emergency plan which includes the activities and resources that will be

employed to respond to and recover from an emergency or disaster; and,

• have a training and exercise program in place to ensure municipal staff, supporting

agencies and volunteers understand and are familiar with their roles and responsibilities.

In essence, municipalities are required to build an Ark.

So, how do the BC Municipal Safety Association and the Public Works Association of BC fit

into your organization’s Emergency Program ark building?

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Charmaigne Pflugrath, CEM, ABCPBCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019

The BCMSA website says, “Safety is our business. We work to improve safety programs and

implement effective occupational health and safety management across the province.”

That’s Prevention & Mitigation.

OH&S professionals are crucial to advocating and promoting employee preparedness and

working with your emergency management program to develop disaster response and

recovery plans. Central OH&S Committees have the opportunity to engage in the design

and delivery of emergency management initiatives that augment your basic First Aid and

Fire Warden programs. And that’s Preparedness.

One of the core functions of OH&S programs is worker safety. This includes worker safety

for day-to-day operations and planning for the safety and of disaster workers. That’s

Response.

And let’s not forget that after an emergency event, we all have to return to work. The

disasters affect not just the people impacted, but those involved in response as well. OH&S

personnel are key players in Critical Incident Stress programs and Return to Work programs.

They may also have a role in Disaster Psychosocial programs. These support programs, and

more, are part of our organization’s disaster Recovery.

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Charmaigne Pflugrath, CEM, ABCPBCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019

The PWABC website is even more specific.

It says they “…have an essential role in all phases of emergency management: planning and

preparation; mitigation and prevention; response; and, recovery.”

It even goes on to say “Public works response to emergencies and disasters is recognized as

an absolute necessity. From ensuring transportation routes are open to having water to

fight fire to weather emergencies. Public Works are always there.”

And I couldn’t agree more.

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You hear people speak about “first responders”.

Typically, they are referring to personnel driving vehicles with sirens and blue, red or white

flashing lights. Of course, I am referring to police, fire and ambulance.

I believe that those engaged in Public Works, and by extension OH&S programs, are the

public’s FIRST first responders.

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Without Public Works, we would not have paved roads.

Those roads would not be cleared of snow or debris enabling traditional first responders to

get to their calls for service.

And there would be no water distribution systems to feed the standpipes firefighting

personnel rely on to put out fires.

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Charmaigne Pflugrath, CEM, ABCPBCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019

No two emergencies are the same. They constantly challenge the skills of emergency

management professionals and task the available resources and personnel engaged in the

response, community recovery and more so, the continuity of municipal service delivery.

This constant evolution means that a successful approach to dealing with an emergency

today may no longer be fully applicable the next time a similar incident occurs.

So, in this ever evolving emergency landscape, how do we build resilience and better

prepare for emergencies that may bend or even break the approaches we currently have

for dealing with them?

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I like to think of adapting to emergencies and enabling resilience as a Lego building

challenge. The resources and knowledge at your disposal are the collection of bricks that

you have.

Each emergency requires a specific mix of bricks to build the ideal response.

So, resilience in this case would be enhanced by having more bricks of a wide variety at

your disposal to help you.

In essence, Emergency Management programs are all about collecting those bricks.

To assist you with your brick collection, I’ve compiled a few tips to help you with your

engagement in your organization’s emergency management program.

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I know this. You already have a pretty good collection of bricks. You have a number

emergency plans and a variety of procedures you use in your day-to-day work.

These plans are adaptable. Just because a plan is for one hazard doesn’t mean that

concepts within it cannot be adapted to any emergency.

Pictured here is the Calgary Zoo.

During the 2013 flood, the zoo was flooded and responders were called to assist

zookeepers with removing vulnerable animals from the flood water.

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Because the zoo had previously practiced an evacuation for a fire scenario, they had

developed knowledge around the unique needs of dealing with an emergency at this

location. Essentially, they had created some new bricks.

Not all of the fire evacuation procedures were relevant during the flood response, but,

there were some bricks of knowledge that these responders would not have previously had

if they had not been engaged in the planning for emergencies at the zoo, or been involved

when the zoo practiced a fire evacuation at their site.

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None of us want our CUPE local going on strike. But we know that the Human Resource

departments and Senior Management Teams have prepared a Labour Disruption Plan.

This plan can be easily be adapted to use for situations where your organization is dealing

with an emergency that affects unionized employees such that they are not able to report

for work, like flooding or an earthquake.

A plan written to address a specific hazard – like labour disruption – has a framework and

principles that can be adapted for another hazards – like a workforce shortage due to a

pandemic.

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Under the WorkSafeBC Occupational Health and Safety Regulation, the employer carries

the responsibility for safety in the workplace. Like City of Burnaby, your organization is

committed to the development and maintenance of a safe work environment as provided

for by our Occupational Health and Safety Policy and Program.

In addition to complying with obligations imposed by law, employees at all levels are

responsible for supporting health and safety activities. OH&S Programs do great work in

guiding and supporting these efforts. But improvements can always be made.

Includes your Emergency Program Coordinator in your OH&S Program or your OH&S

Committee.

Here are some questions for you to consider.

• Is the care and safety of all your workers during a disaster included in your OH&S

program?

• Do you have a “Family First” policy or statement? Is that statement sustainable in the

face of your organization’s ability to serve your citizens?

• Does your OH&S program include a culture of employee personal preparedness?

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Should it?

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OH&S professionals may also be responsible for the development and delivery of your

organization’s Emergency Procedures, such as building evacuation, Shelter-In-Place,

Lockdown, Robbery, and the support of Emergency Response Teams or Fire Wardens.

• Is the Emergency Response Team or Fire Warden program limited to training on

evacuation?

• Does it include training in and PPE & equipment for post-disaster Search and Rescue?

• Should it?

You definitely have some existing OH&S bricks you could leverage to increase your

organizations’ disaster resilience.

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As the saying goes, use it or lose it.

Regular practice and exercises, using multiple scenarios and not just the ones you might

normally expect, creates new knowledge - essentially new bricks for your collection.

In Burnaby, we have a regular schedule for Emergency Operations Centre training and

exercises. Our program includes training blocks in October and November with an EOC

exercise occurring the following spring.

We have a library of over 75 scenarios that we developed during our Hazard Risk Impact

and Vulnerability Assessment. This ensures our exercises scenarios are not stale or limited

to just floods, fires or earthquakes.

A constant cycle of training, drills, simulations and exercises is a necessary ingredient for

building your collection of Lego bricks.

It enables organizational resilience to a wide range of hazards.

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Now, don’t be afraid of asking your Emergency Program Coordinator to help you with a

simulation, exercise or drill, no matter the size or complexity.

The Burnaby RCMP Detachment engaged my office to design, deliver and evaluate an

exercise for their Detachment Management Team and key municipal employees at the

Detachment.

The exercise was used to dispel some myths, determine additional training needs, and to

confirm familiarity with the RCMP Detachment’s Disaster Response Plan and its alignment

with the City’s Emergency Plan.

Understanding what the bricks you have and how they are or can be put together is always

helpful in understanding your department’s capabilities, capacities, and limitations.

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Charmaigne Pflugrath, CEM, ABCPBCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019

Who knows what a SWOT Analysis is?

Who uses SWOT Analysis for as a strategic planning or project planning technique?

Who uses SWOT as an evaluation tool?

Has anyone been involved in a debrief meeting for major event or emergency response

where SWOT was used to inform an Incident After Action or Improvement Report?

SWOT can certainly be helpful for evaluations or assessments when used by Facilitators and

participants with a good understanding of SWOT principles. But more often than not, those

who can best inform the SWOT are the ones who find it confusing.

And if evaluation participants are confused, they will be disinterested and not provide good

feedback.

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So, here is a new Assessment and Evaluation Tool.

KEEP-GET-LOSE-AVOID-LUCK is simple to understand. It is easy to apply to any business line

within your organization. And in my experience, when used, participants are willing to

provide more honest, practical and applicable feedback. Keep-Get-Lose-Avoid was

developed by staff from North Shore Emergency Management and volunteers of North

Shore Search and Rescue.

The method includes one important element that SWOT does not – Luck.

So, how did Luck get added? Appreciating that at times inclement and unpleasant weather

can occur in January in the Lower Mainland, and more so North Vancouver, at the debrief

meeting following a memorial parade for the SAR Team’s leader a participant added “It sure

was lucky that it wasn’t raining.” What followed was mention of other “lucky” occurrences

that aided in the event’s success.

Luck is an important attribute to emergency management because sometimes, like good

weather for a parade, things just happen by sheer luck that help with disaster response and

recovery.

Be willing to replace old bricks with new ones.

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Take advantage of every emergency management training opportunity and practise what

you learn at emergency exercises.

Emergency Managers talk a lot about continuous training, and we support ongoing

emergency management learning. This includes training in the Incident Command System

for in-the-field personnel and Emergency Operations Centre training for staff so designated.

Emergency Management is known for sharing lessons broadly, and encouraging others to

share in return. Through this process, our teams continue to build new knowledge and stay

informed of the most up-to-date of practices.

Training also allows personnel from the various divisions with a role in response to meet

one another in an informal, blame-free environment. And familiarity creates comfort in

chaos.

Continuous learning is an absolute necessity. This creates a new and updated selection of

bricks to help you construct a culture of resilience.

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As our colleagues from Grand Forks, Kelowna, Prince George, Cash Creek and Calgary can

attest to, disaster debris is not just created by earthquakes.

In fact, flooding is the most frequent debris-causing hazard.

For the coastal communities, like those of the Lower Mainland, earthquake will potentially

be the greatest single-event debris generator.

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Charmaigne Pflugrath, CEM, ABCPBCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019

The 2010 and 2011 earthquakes in New Zealand generated significant volumes of debris.

It included what you would expect - building and structural debris.

So here’s a fun fact. Before the earthquakes, New Zealand’s construction and demolition

industry waste averaged 3.4 million tonnes per year.

The two biggest earthquakes, the magnitude 6.2 Darfield Earthquakes that struck on

September 4th, 2010 and the magnitude 6.3 Christchurch aftershock that occurred on

February 22, 2011, generated in excess of 50 million tonnes of building and structural

debris between them within a 6 month period.

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These earthquakes, and a few of the 17 thousand 6 hundred aftershocks that continued

into 2016, included some unexpected debris.

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Vehicles.

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Huge volumes of sand and soils from liquefaction.

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Asphalt and concrete from damaged roads and sidewalks.

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Infrastructure that had to be removed and replaced

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Damaged water and sewer pipes and their fittings.

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Charmaigne Pflugrath, CEM, ABCPBCMSA/PWABC Joint Conference 2019

And kilometers of bent rail racks.

Following these events, a movement to develop municipal, sub-regional and regional

disaster debris management plans for Metro Vancouver communities was re-energized.

A new brick was coming.

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In 2015, the Solid Waste Sub Committee of the Regional Engineers Advisory Committee for

the Metro Vancouver Regional District took on the development of a Regional Disaster

Debris Management Plan.

This was done in collaboration with the Integrated Partnership for Regional Emergency

Management (or IPREM).

For those not familiar with IPREM, it is an intergovernmental 50/50 partnership between

the Province of British Columbia and Metro Vancouver (on behalf of the 23 member local

governments). IPREM was formed to coordinate regional emergency management planning

activities. IPREM collaboratively engage all levels of government and private sector

agencies in regional emergency planning initiatives for Metro Vancouver.

The first Joint Municipal Regional Disaster Debris Management Operational Plan was

completed in December 2016. It was updated in October 2017 and is available on the

Metro Vancouver Regional District’s website.

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In 2017, the City of Burnaby used the Regional Debris Management Plan as the framework

for our municipal Debris Management Operational Guideline. We also used many of the

sub-reginal and regional planning considerations for the collection, storage, movement and

disposal of disaster debris.

Like all of our Operational Guidelines, Disaster Debris Management takes an all hazard

approach and is applicable to any significant incident - such as fires, floods, earthquakes,

hazard material incidents, and so on - that may generate large volumes of debris.

A template of our DDM Guideline and some of the planning tools is freely available to you.

Just email us at [email protected].

We are happy to help you with tools to develop your new brick.

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One of the most beneficial undertakings of our DDM project was the workshop we held to

identify potential debris collection and storage sites across the city.

The workshop participants included representatives from

• Parks Design and Parks Operations,

• Solid Waste and Recycling,

• Environmental Engineering,

• Roads and Drainage,

• Traffic Engineering,

• our GIS group,

• our in-house Legal team, and,

• both Risk Management and Emergency Management.

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For the workshop we divided the City into 4 quadrants, matching the zones of the four

town centres.

We divided the participants into 4 teams so that each team could focus their efforts to a

single quadrant.

Teams were assigned a member of our GIS team to record their site decisions on our

internal Disaster Debris GIS portal.

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Using the concepts in our Disaster Debris Guideline, such as debris estimation tools and

site selection considerations, each team identified numerous potential sites, and then

assessed them using the Site Suitability Matrix.

This project also entailed the identification of potential shared or sub-regional sites in our

neighbouring jurisdictions of Vancouver and New Westminster.

Fortunately for us, these shared sites were confirmed by these neighbours at a Regional

DDM Operational Guideline validation workshop.

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Another new brick being worked on for the Metro Vancouver region is an Emergency

Provision of Water Guideline.

Again, the Metro Vancouver Regional Engineers Advisory Committee is taking the lead and

has assigned their Water Sub Committee to develop a Regional Temporary Provision of

Drinking Water Planning.

This Planning Guideline includes 17 recommendations.

The first 5 recommendations, shown here, support the Auditor General for Local

Government’s auditing theme of “Local Government’s Role in Ensuring Clean Drinking

Water.”

This new brick is still being developed. Once it has been completed, like the Regional

Disaster Debris document it will be shared on the Metro Vancouver website.

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Emergency Management BC, in partnership with Defence Research and Development

Canada and the Justice Institute of BC, developed a Critical Infrastructure (CI) Assessment

Tool. It is a resource to assist local governments and regional districts with the analysis of CI

in the context of hazard scenarios.

The primary purpose of the Tool is to provide a single venue for participants from your

various departments and, if appropriate stakeholder agencies, to discuss

• what services you feel are critical to provide to residents during an emergency,

• the assets needed to provide those services, and,

• what external goods and services you rely on in order to make those assets available.

Ultimately, the process is intended to be a medium to facilitate discussion that will

• Enhance overall organizational awareness of CI dependencies among key actors

• Identify and analyze vulnerable goods & services

• Identify and analyze the criticality of local assets

• Identify areas where there is a need to increase robustness and redundancies

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Best of all, the Tool and all the required resources are free to you from Emergency

Management BC. These resources include

• a Getting Started Guide for project Champions;

• Participant Resources including an example of a completed CI Tool Worksheet

• Many Workshop facilitation aids,

• And lastly, Templates and Examples

The beauty of this tool is that it is allows for the addition of fields to adapt the tool to the

unique need of the CI assessment for your organization.

Be sure to engage your Emergency Program Coordinator if you choose to use this tool.

This brick will go a long way to improve the resilience of your community and your critical

infrastructure by developing and implementing recommendations related to

prevention/mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.

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Also on the theme of critical infrastructure…

Public Safety Canada’s Regional Resilience Assessment Program (or RRAP) is a vulnerability

and dependency assessment program for owners and operators of critical infrastructure

facilities within Canada’s 10 CI sectors.

The RRAP is comprised of three tools:

• a Critical Infrastructure Resilience Tool;

• a Critical Infrastructure Multimedia Tool; and,

• a Canadian Cyber Resilience Review.

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This program involves site assessments to help organizations measure and improve their

resilience to all hazards in Canada, such as cyber threats, accidental or intentional human-

induced events, and natural catastrophes.

RRAP site assessments are voluntary, non-regulatory, and confidential. But more

importantly, it’s free of charge. It’s not very often that local governments get anything for

free from the federal level; so, I strongly recommend taking advantage of this opportunity

before the program is cancelled.

Organizations may also express interest in participating in a broader regional assessment.

Regional RRAP projects typically involve working with multiple organizations in a particular

region. During a regional assessment, the individual assessment tools are deployed

alongside modelling tools, workshops, stakeholder meetings, and subject matter expert

interviews.

As you can see, there are many new brick you can add to enhance your organization’s

resilience.

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In a rapidly evolving emergency management environment, it is absolutely necessary to

engage with a broad range of partners, some of which may fall completely outside the

traditional. These partnerships that can provide some highly creative and unique Lego

bricks that allow you to solve problems in new ways.

For example, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, the creation of an online platform to

identify gas stations where fuel was available was lauded as a great initiative which assisted

during the response and the recovery.

This was enabled by some software engineers in Regina, Saskatchewan at GasBuddy.

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They happened to notice that their gas price app usage in Texas and Florida went up

exponentially as Hurricane Harvey approached the US in mid-August 2017.

By August 31, they had released an update to the app that included a gas availability

tracking system informing users where gas was available after the hurricane had subsided.

The engagement of new partners - from software developers and virtual volunteers to

volunteer rescue teams and community groups - is a hallmark of recent emergencies in this

day and age.

What worked yesterday may no longer work or be the best option for the disasters of

tomorrow.

Experimenting, learning and incorporating new ideas will rapidly create adaptability.

It allows for the creative generation of a range of new bricks even in the midst of a disaster.

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Whether you want them or not, there will be volunteers.

So, to best utilize these resources, it is important that you have a guideline or plan for

managing and utilizing them.

This should be developed in collaboration with your Emergency Program Coordinator,

Human Resources department, and Union.

Volunteers may be used to augment municipal crews, not replace them.

Utilizing volunteers allows municipal personnel to be more broadly deployed to priority

situations.

When managing volunteers, one municipal employee can supervise or oversee the work of

up to 7 volunteers.

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These volunteers can fall into some key categories:

Affiliated – these are volunteers who have registered with a volunteer program of your

organization.

They may be volunteers for your community’s Emergency Support Services Program or they

volunteer at a recreation facility.

Alternately, they may be affiliated with a recognized volunteer organization which has been

specifically requested by your EOC to support your organization’s response or recovery

activities.

These volunteer organizations may include, but are not limited to the Canadian Red Cross,

the Salvation Army or St. John Ambulance.

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Unaffiliated volunteers are also referred to as “walk-in”, “episodic”, or “spontaneous”

volunteers.

These are individuals that offer their service and/or expertise during an emergency or

disaster but are not affiliated or previously registered with your organization.

Then there are Self-Deploying Professionals.

These volunteers can often be police, fire, health care professionals or engineers who

converge to a disaster site or into a disaster area, either as individuals or as groups, and

have expertise and/or bring specialized equipment.

There are challenges related to verifying the credentials of unaffiliated volunteers and self-

deploying professionals.

It is also necessary to register these volunteers or volunteer groups, matching knowledge,

skills, and abilities to defined tasks.

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This often proves challenging for the receiving organization and, although necessary, may

appear overly bureaucratic to the volunteers.

Shown here are volunteers from a passionate group of 40 Alberta motorcycle riders after

the 2013 Alberta overland flooding.

They did a self-guided tour through Canmore, Kananaskis and some of their favourite

motorcycle riding regions, stopping to help those hardest hit by the flooding.

It’s undeniable, that what these volunteers did was appreciated by the flood victims and

valued by the impacted communities.

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Impacted citizens, their family, their friends, their neighbours, the media, and even

complete strangers will look to the leaders of your community for peace of mind and

reassurance that everything that can be done after an unexpected disaster is being done.

Your Community leaders will rely on you to alleviate these concerns and have answers to

who, what, when, where, and why, but most important “How your community is helping

them”?

This is when you will be reaching back into your assortment of bricks. And being engaged in

collecting these bricks will ensure you are able to provide with confidence the information

needed.

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So I’ve shared with you just a few tips and some examples to help you help your Emergency

Program. Having a wide range of these Lego bricks will help to build the best possible Ark.

The rapidly shifting emergency management landscape means that we cannot simply rely

on static plans and approaches to deal with tomorrow's emergencies.

Having a foundation for resilience that's based on having a wide variety of components or

bricks that you can access to build your community’s response and recovery activities is

essential.

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You cannot get an emergency to adapt to your plan; but, you can certainly adapt your plan

to deal with the emergency.

Just remember that each emergency or disaster is unique and the demands on plans,

guidelines and resources will be slightly different.

Flexibility is the key.

The last thing you want during an emergency is to be using plans or guidelines that are out

of date, or worse, contain information that is no longer relevant or practical for the time.

Your department or division may be the subject matter experts for certain plans, overland

flooding, disaster debris, or emergency provision of water, for example.

It is so important that these plans are updated at least annually, and more importantly,

when updated that they are shared with your Emergency Program Coordinator.

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We all spend time wishing things to change. Perhaps it’s time we take Eleanor Roosevelt’s

advice and put our energy to planning for organizational resilience, rather than wishing it

so.

We’ve all heard this before: Take your wish and write it down. Now it’s a Goal.

Assign some actions to your goal and it becomes a Plan.

Just make sure your plan has elasticity. Success occurs when you implement your plan and

adapt it to the circumstances presented.

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An IPSOS survey on personal preparedness in BC found that most British Columbians are

unprepared for emergencies. 54% of the survey respondents indicated that they have a

household emergency plan but only three in 10 confirmed that they a 72-hour emergency

supplies kit that they update at least annually.

It is critical to your community’s response capacity as well as the continuity of municipal

service delivery that you have an emergency plan and dedicated emergency supplies for

your household.

Getting prepared is easy. And just three simple steps.

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Step number one – Know the Risks.

As you all live in different regions of BC, you will all need to consider some similar hazards

and some very different ones.

Your household emergency plan has to consider all possible hazards for where you live -

from A to Z – Avalanche to Zombie Apocalypse.

Be imaginative. Get your family involved. When it comes to what risks to consider, there

are no wrong answers.

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Step number 2 – Make a Plan.

Your emergency plan should be basic enough to cover all the hazards you’ve identified.

Create the plan with all members of our household participating.

The Plan should include:

• 2 meeting places or assembly points: one outside your home; the other somewhere in

the neighbourhood, like a park or other open field. Please avoid using a school field.

• 2 emergency contacts: one in-town, like a neighbour or family member; and, one out-of-

town who will not be affected by the same emergency or disaster. Include in the plan a

common emergency contact list.

• 2 alternate people, other than yourself and your spouse, who are authorized by you to

pick up your children from school or daycare.

• The medical history and current medical information for every person in your

household. Ensure you have copies of life-sustaining prescriptions, as well.

• If you have pets, have a plan for their care. It’s a good idea to have copy of their current

shots with your emergency plan.

• And, whether you are a home owner or a renter, insure the contents of your home.

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Step number 3 - Get a Kit.

The list of supplies that’s recommended you have on hand may seem substantial. But it is

about the safety and care of your family, and that’s what’s important.

A flashlight, an AM/FM radio, spare batteries, a first aid kit, some toilet paper, candles,

matches and duct tape are some of the basic supplies.

A change of weather appropriate clothes, sturdy shoes, a blanket, spare glasses- if needed,

books or games for you and the kids, a dust mask for each person, & some cash and coins

are just some of the Personal Items.

You should have a tent or tarp, a fuel-driven stove and fuel, pots and cooking utensils,

plates and cutlery, and garbage bags as your family or household items.

And don’t forget the manual can opener, non-perishable food that your family normally eat

and at least 4 litres of water for each person in the household per day and enough stored

for a minimum of 3 days.

All these items and more would be stored in a container large enough to hold everything.

Families might find it convenient to use a brand new wheeled garbage bin with a tight

fitting lid and keep it in the backyard or in a shed. Those in a townhouse, condo or

apartment should store their supplies in a backpack with wheels and keep it close to an

exit, like in a hall or foyer closet.

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For more information on what you should do to prepare your household emergency plan

and the recommended supplies to should put together, visit

• burnaby.ca/getprepared

• gov.bc.ca/preparedbc

• getprepared.ca.

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Improve your ability to bounce forward - not back - after an emergency or disaster.

Start collecting those bricks.

And help your emergency program in the Ark building for your organization.

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Be engaged in your organization’s emergency program.

Work on collecting those Lego bricks.

And be sure you are personally prepared.

Because it would awful if this was you.

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