The City of Kamloops is pushing for the creation of a dedicated regional support hub for evacuees who are displaced to the Tournament Capital.

Councillor Bill Sarai says the idea is to free up recreational facilities like McArthur Island, telling Radio NL those facilities aren’t meant to be used as reception centres for weeks on end, given the frequency and severity of disasters like fires and floods in recent years.

“We’ve become very good at what we do which is [hosting the] evacuation centre for the region,” Sarai said, on NL Newsday. “The negative aspects are its not a weekend event no more, or maybe even a week, its’ becoming months, and just lately you’ve noticed the whole summer.”

“When you take a facility out of the inventory for three, four weeks, it affects everybody. We want to do our job as the evacuation centre but we also don’t want to have impacts on our other user groups. That is something we are trying to get away from.”

Sarai says a standalone facility would also help better train volunteers, who would be ready to go at a moments notice.

“It is in the province’s best interest to fund a year-round building where our staff can be trained throughout the year, and when an event unfortunately does happen, they are familiar with their surroundings,” Sarai added.

“This could be a facility that is used year-round for Kamloops to help the surrounding communities.”

Thousands of evacuees made their way through the McArthur Island Reception Centre this year. While the majority were able to stay with friends or families or in hotels, others were being put up in a new 300 bed evacuee camp on Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc land in Rayleigh.

There was a group lodging facility set up at McArthur Island which was used briefly this year. In years past, the City has set up group lodging at Sandman Centre downtown.

Sarai says City Councillors have presented their proposal to B.C.’s Emergency Management Minister Bowinn Ma, at this week’s UBCM convention in Vancouver.

“She was absolutely receptive to the idea,” Sarai said, noting the Minister has asked the City to identify some sites that could be suitable.

“I think what we are trying to do is look at the inventory of what the City has with buildings or with our partners at TteS and what we can utilize and then we need to get the government on board to say, ‘would be able to be the third partner or the only partner?'”

“It’s all in the proposal that we put forward and we’ll leave it to the minister to come back to us and let us know if we’re on the right track.”