Duane Hicks
Emergency Management Ontario will be conducting a major emergency response exercise Nov. 16-23 across Northwestern Ontario—and Fort Frances is to be one of more than 25 municipalities and three First Nations participating.
Called “Trillium Response 2008,” the exercise is based on each municipality’s annual requirement to conduct an emergency exercise for testing components of their respective emergency plans.
Thunder Bay and the surrounding area will be “a hub of major and complex activities throughout the week,” Fort Frances Fire Chief Gerry Armstrong told council at its meeting Monday night.
Starting this Sunday, Environment Canada will be issuing inclement weather information—more specifically, a massive ice storm—across the region. As Community Emergency Management Co-ordinator (CEMC), Chief Armstrong will start role-playing along with the situation as it if were real.
At a pre-determined date and time during the week, a weather-related incident will be inserted into the exercise by the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre to signal the beginning of the local exercise—and the town’s emergency control group will jump into action.
The local participants will include police, fire, and ambulance services, town administration, Public Works, Fort Frances Power Corp., the Canadian Red Cross, Rainy River District Victim Services, Rainy River District Social Services Administration Board, B93fm, Fort Frances Times, various other emergency control group members, and a few volunteers.
Exactly what this incident will be, and when it will happen, is known to Chief Armstrong. But most of the other players will not know the date and time when their services will be called upon.
Since it will be playing out in “real time,” the situation has to be as close to a real emergency as possible in order to test all the response organizations.
“We want to make it as realistic as we can,” stressed Chief Armstrong. “We don’t want everyone sitting around waiting for the phone to ring to report in and go through the process.”
During the exercise, the following objectives have been set to test the specific components of the local emergency plan:
•activate the community control group call-out system;
•activate and set up the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) at the Civic Centre;
•declare a state of emergency;
•test telecommunications and radio communications between the EOC and the incident site;
•activate the evacuation centre at the Memorial Sports Centre; and
•make effective use of the media to provide public information and updates.
To assist in evaluating the local response, evaluators have been chosen to observe and comment on specific components of exercise activities. They include International Falls Fire Chief Jerry Jensen, CN Police Cst. Pete LeDrew, Grace Silander, patient safety/risk management co-ordinator for Riverside Health Care Facilities, Inc., and Nettie Kaufman of the Ministry of Natural Resources.
Chief Armstrong stressed the local emergency response preparedeness group is “a real important part of us attempting to be ready for the unthinkable, if you will, or those things we are not having a great deal of control over.”
“I am a big believer in being prepared, a strong believer in prevention, and certainly being in a situation where you can be prepared if a disaster or event does happen is important,” he remarked.
In advance of next week, Chief Armstrong thanked Fort Frances CAO Mark McCaig, and alternate CEMCs Capt. Joe Bobczynski and deputy clerk Kathy Lawson for helping him put together the local exercise.
McCaig said the town’s preparedness at this point far exceeds where it was at a couple years ago thanks to Chief Armstrong, Capt. Bobczynski, and Lawson. That said, the importance of being prepared for an emergency was made “crystal clear” earlier this year after the natural gas leak and explosion at J.W. Walker School here.
“We came very close to having a very real situation, and as a matter of fact we convened the emergency control group in anticipation of maybe having to declare an emergency,” McCaig noted.
He added the town participated in an emergency exercise with International Falls a few years ago involving a U.S. Homeland Security scenario done in “real time,” which “really got your blood boiling.”
“I can’t understate the importance of having this exercise,” McCaig continued. “We have our binders, we have our meetings, but to actually go through something that’s a little bit of a surprise and unannounced is very important.”
On a broader scale, key players in the “Trillium Response 2008” exercise will be the Ministry of Community Safety, Department of National Defence, Ministry of Health and Long-term Care, and the Toronto and Winnipeg Heavy Urban Search and Rescue (HUSAR), with the MNR and ministries of Transportation, Municipal Affairs and Housing, Environment, and Northern Development and Mines also taking part.
