Terry Lake, the CEO of the BC Care Providers Association based in Kamloops, said he can’t imagine what care home residents in Merritt went through last week who were evacuated.

Lake was reacting to stories from loved ones of The Florentine who said it took two days, missed meals and lost sleep to relocate care home residents from Merritt to a number of care homes in the Lower Mainland.

The Florentine, Gillis House and Nicola Meadows were evacuated last Monday because of the City of Merritt being put on evacuation alert.

Lake pointed out there have been many care homes evacuated this summer, when communities were put on evacuation alert, including homes in Chase, 100 Mile House and Vernon, among others.

“We initially had some concerns back in July with the evacuation process. I will say that later, it became better, and we had more resources available, we ironed some things out, worked with the health authority. But the Merritt situation, I think, was different than every other situation.”

“This was not an operation that was smoothly done. We really need to examine what happened and how we can prevent this in the future. Because this will not be the last time we have to evacuate a care home. Given climate change, and fire seasons we have that get worse and worse every year.”

Lake said the province created the BC Health System Wildfire Response plan in 2018, after what was a record wildfire season in 2017, which outlines rules and responsibilities when a hospital or care home is evacuated. He says that needs to be leaned on more heavily going forward.

“In my experience, talking with the health authority and the ministry, it doesn’t look like this plan is referred to very often. So let’s get it off the shelf.”