Ahead of the peak of the fire season, the City of Kamloops is still hoping to see more people sign up for the Voyent Alert emergency notification system.

Communications Supervisor, Kristen Rodrigue, says city staff are doing what they can to highlight the usefulness of the service in the event of an emergency.

“The irony of that is typically an event [like a fire] is what gets the registrations up,” Rodrigue said. “That is when people see the value, and when people notice there is a system.”

“We are doing the best we can to promote it and get that word out there to register for Voyent in advance of fire season so that you are ready to be notified in the event that we have to use an evacuation alert or order.”

The City of Kamloops began a one-year trial of Voyent Alert in March. It was put in place after concerns were raised about the lack of communication from the City during the Juniper fire on July 1 of last year.

Over the rest of 2021 summer wildfire season, the City used the TNRD’s Voyent account on two occasions – Aug. 5 and Aug. 15 – to notify Kamloops residents about evacuation alerts in place for their neighbourhoods. It was also used to rescind those notifications on Aug. 7 and Aug. 17.

City staff are also looking into issues that came up during the first test of the Voyent Alert system in early June.

“We know that this isn’t a service that everybody is going to subscribe to,” Rodrigue added.

“It is only one of the tools that we would use in that situation. We would still use our local media. We would still use social media, we would knock on doors if we need to.”