Environment and Climate Change Canada has issued a heat warning for the South Thompson region and the city of Kamloops is activating its heat response plan while encouraging residents to check in on friends, family, and neighbours who may have heat sensitivity or vulnerability.
A strong ridge of high pressure is building over the region which will cause daytime highs to reach the mid to upper 30s. Overnight lows are expected to be in the high teens. The above average heat is expected to persist until the end of the weekend at which time the ridge will break down and temperatures will cool.
As a result of the above seasonal conditions, the city has opened the Cooling Centre at Sandman Centre. It will be open as of Thursday, August 1, from noon until 8:00 pm, daily until the end of the heat event.
Community Services Manager Will Beatty says there will be other cooling options as well. “The city will be offering free seniors drop in when available, free public swim. Again, that’s public swim as well as the Sandman center will be activated as the indoor cooling space for folks. And, yeah, I mean, that’s the typical response that you would see.”
Beatty acknowledged the criticism around not activating the the Sandman Center last time. “It has to do with the availability of facilities. So this facility is available to us [this time]. It’s something that, again, that isn’t an easy thing to do to disrupt large events that are at places like a large Sandman center. But we’re very fortunate that this event and the planning that was able to go into this, with the Emergency Operations Center being activated, we were able to secure the Sandman center and provide that as the indoor cooling space until the heat warning is rescinded.”
“With the emergency preparedness manager Ty Helgason, delivered that heat response plan that was created for the city and and what has been identified in that plan is actually micro-cooling stations throughout the community are a lot better application for heat response. So the seniors drop-ins and free public swimming scenarios can definitely work. Free ice skating as well. So a lot of encouraging those micro-cooling stations in community versus one centralized location, can generally be the best fit. But we are seeing some need for some people, as well as the ability to transport people to this to this space. So we are going to continue to utilize it for now.”
