The City of Kamloops is one of four B.C. communities chosen to pilot a new provincial Emergency Support Services modernization project.
The role the city played during fire and flood evacuations in 2017 and 2018 is why they were chosen as part of the pilot project, as Emergency Management B.C. (EMBC) works to digitize their programs.
EMBC is looking to digitize their programs, which they believe will speed up processing people during future evacuations.
The city’s Social and Community Development Supervisor Natalie Serl says instead of the tried and tested paper forms, this pilot will test if a digital method is more efficient.
“This is a great update to the manual forms that have been used in the past,” she said. “It will reduce errors, it will reduce the amount of time that it takes to do things.”
“By giving people the ability to register ahead of time, it gives a feeling of having control over a component of the situation that they are in. And I hope that would bring some comfort.”
Serl adds volunteers spent the past weekend training.
“We did mock scenarios and we did examples from different types of scenarios that an evacuee may be encountering in having to pre-register,” she said. “And then from the perspective of the volunteer, when they are receiving somebody, the types of questions that they go through.”
“We event went through what are some of the glitches that we may run into with the volume of people.”
Serl says by having people pre-register if they are on evacuation alert, or while they are travelling to a reception centre, they’ll be able to better direct them towards food, lodging, clothing, emotional support, family reunification or whatever else they may need in an evacuation.
The new system can be used for evacuations of any size, and the pilot will run about six months once it is launched.
“We’re still working on how the program works, so I can’t speak to firm timelines or dates when we’ll launch,” added Serl. “And as long as we don’t have an emergency situation, we won’t be going live with it.”
Also part of the pilot project is Kelowna, Prince George, and the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc.
