Duane Hicks
Having weathered a simulated “ice storm” last Wednesday as part of Emergency Management Ontario’s “Trillium Response 2008,” the local Community Control Group generally was satisfied with its response to the exercise.
“We were pretty happy with the outcome,” said Fort Frances Fire Chief Gerry Armstrong. “When we went into this thing, we had six objectives that we really wanted to focus on and we did accomplish those objectives.”
Those objectives included:
•activating the community control group call-out system;
•activating and setting up the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) at the Civic Centre;
•declaring a state of emergency;
•testing telecommunications and radio communications between the EOC and the incident site;
•activating the evacuation centre at the Memorial Sports Centre; and
•making effective use of the media to provide public information and updates.
“Obviously, the exercises are all about testing the certain components of a plan to ensure that we were making it workable and practical so that in the real event, we could hopefully function,” said Chief Armstrong.
“When you’re playing through a scenario, there ended up being a couple of glitches, which really aren’t negatives by any means because when you’re playing a scenario and trying to get people to role-play, it doesn’t always work exactly the way you think it should,” he noted.
“But we did accomplish our objectives,” Chief Armstrong stressed. “We did learn some things from it, as you always do.
“It brings people back to the table again to kind of refresh their memories as to what their roles would be in the event of an emergency or a requirement to have them function as an Emergency Operations Centre [EOC].”
He said all of the players who were supposed to get involved were represented at the table once the Community Control Group convened at the EOC set up at the Civic Centre, including members of the OPP, fire, and Emergency Medical Services, Public Works, Fort Frances Power Corp., Rainy River District Victim Services, and Rainy River District Social Services Administration Board, among other agencies.
“It was a pretty positive exercise for all of those involved,” said Chief Armstrong.
“Overall, we felt the exercise went very well,” echoed Dan McCormick, health services manager for the DSSAB. “We identified some small administration issues we’re going to work on, some additional training issues we want to do with staff, but that’s sort of the whole purpose.”
The CCG will have a debriefing this coming Monday to go over what it did right—and what it learned to be better prepared next time.
“We know there’s some simple things we need to work on,” said Chief Armstrong. “It’s like any exercise where you’re attempting to educate and train payers that are going to be part of your organization, it takes time, it takes practice, and you need to continue to do these things.
“Each time we do it, there’s things that come out that we know we can improve upon and do better,” he stressed. “We discovered those things, and we know there’s some notes that are going to coming back to us on Dec. 1 to improve things.
“Even though we’re going to talk about them, we’re already aware of them,” he added. “It’s not like there’s going to be any surprises on that date.”
One example was the use of two-way radios in the meeting room—they tend to disrupt and drown out other communications.
“We knew that would likely be an issue, but we wanted to test it and see how much of an issue it would be,” noted Chief Armstrong.
Another example was communicating a better understanding of how ambulance services are dispatched here. McCormick said that generally all ambulance-related communications go through a dispatch centre in Kenora.
“They order the ambulances to the locations, so even though I may be sitting in an emergency control group, I would still go through Kenora and say, ‘I need this resource at this location.’ That sort of got missed in the exercise.
“That’s one of the areas we’re going to do some education with the Fort group, to make them understand they don’t directly call the ambulance base for ambulances [during a mock exercise],” he noted.
McCormick also said EMS has to balance its local responsibilities with its district ones.
“When we’re running three separate exercises—one concern we have is we don’t have a lot of management staff—we’re not going to be able to attend every emergency control group if everyone has one,” he warned. “We’ll be looking at the district response—what do we need in place to cover the district.”
The exercise was watched over by evaluators who were chosen to observe and comment on specific components of activities. They included local CN Police Cst. Pete LeDrew, Grace Silander, patient safety/risk management co-ordinator for Riverside Health Care Facilities, Inc., and Nettie Kaufman, logistics and service supervisor with the Ministry of Natural Resources here.
B93fm station manager Leo Melanson oversaw the radio station’s participation in the exercise.
Chief Armstrong had been working with alternate CEMCs, Capt. Joe Bobczynski and deputy town clerk Kathy Lawson, to put together the local exercise, and credited them for their hard work, which they had to do in addition to their regular jobs, over the past few weeks leading up to last Wednesday.
In related news, an emergency exercise was held Thursday evening in Emo, bringing together municipalities from La Vallee to Rainy River.
The exercise, headed up by Sioux Narrows Fire Chief Woody Linton, was based around a communications failure resulting from the “ice storm.”
