Make it a priority-plan now, plan well

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Emergency plans are like having insurance-preparing them isn't seen as being priority until you find yourself needing them.

Last summer, many First Nation communities in B.C. learned firsthand the importance of having emergency plans in place. The province experienced its worst year ever for forest fires. By the end of the summer more than 2,500 wildfires had been recorded.

In all, more than 260,000 hectares of forest were destroyed, along with a number of houses and businesses. More than 45,000 people were evacuated when advancing flames threatened their communities.

Paula Santos is general manager of the First Nations' Emergency Services Society (FNESS) of British Columbia, which has been operating in the province since 1983. For the first decade or so, it was a society of Native firefighters, but by the mid-1990s the society had expanded its focus to include a broader spectrum of emergency services and began working to raise awareness within First Nations of the need to prepare for any emergency. Then last June, with funding from Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), FNESS began helping First Nations develop those emergency plans.

So far, there has been a very good response from First Nations wanting to take advantage of the services offered by the society.

"Especially with the forest fires last summer, people have just been coming out of the woodwork looking to do emergency plans for their communities," she said.

What FNESS does for a community is send an emergency planner in to guide them through the process-making sure chief and council are on board, helping to determine who the emergency co-ordinator should be and doing an assessment of the risks or hazards in the community and the resources available to respond to those hazards. Then they take all the information and put it together into a plan. Once the plan is in place, the society helps train the people responsible to respond to emergencies and educate community members about how they need to react in an emergency. Then come the drills or exercises to make sure the plan works.

"You don't have to wait until an emergency happens," Santos said. "You can do a test of it and see, 'Okay, are there any gaps, or are there any things that we need to think about differently based on how the test went or how the drill went?'"

Each emergency plan can be created to meet the specific needs of the community, and with input from community members, she said.

"The plan is better accepted if everyone buys into it through the process, rather than just somebody coming in from the outside and doing it for them. And so we like to make it a community-type process."

The level of emergency preparedness that already exists when FNESS is called in to help develop a plan has varied from community to community.

"It depends on the size of the community and how busy they are with other issues as well. You know, if they're fairly small and they're dealing with a lot of other issues, it may not be the top of their list of priorities. And they can only do so much with the people that they have," Santos said.

"Most have a good awareness of what it is and why it's needed. It's just a matter of getting it done and finding the time to get it done, because it can be a long process. You do need a lot of input from the community at large, from Elders... it's not just you go in there once and write a report and that's it."

But, thanks to last year's fires, having a plan in place to deal with emergencies has become a bigger priority than it once was, Santos said.

"It's suddenly raised everyone's awareness of 'Oh, what would I do if I needed to evacuate?' and 'Does my community have a plan in place?' So I think everybody in the province is kind of going, 'Oh, my God, are we ready?'"

This summer's forest fires, while nowhere near as widespread and devastating as last year's, have served as a test for some of the communities that have put emergencyplans into place.

"This year was a lot better than last year, for sure," Santos said. And some, actually, they'd just finished their planning, then they were on evacuation alert. And their plan worked beautifully and they were really, really happy with it. So it was good to see that it was something that they felt, 'wow, we're so glad we got that done.'"

As part of the emergency planning process, FNESS acts as a bridge between First Nations and the provincial agencies whose responsibility it is to respond to emergencies. The society also helps create working relationships between First Nations and neighboring communities if those relationships don't already exist.

In Alberta, the responsibility for co-ordinating emergency planning for the province falls to Emergency Management Alberta (EMA), part of the public safety division of the department of municipal affairs. Working within EMA are two disaster services officers who, under an arrangement between the province and INAC, work specifically with First Nations.

Rudy Parenteau is the disaster services officer for northern Alberta who works out of the EMA regional office in St. Paul. Though he works on contract for the province, he makes it clear to First Nations who he really works for.

"We tell them, 'We're here as consultants. We work for the First Nations. How do you want to make that plan? It's your community. It's your jurisdiction. You know the culture. You know all the other issues that go on. Here's the focus. Here's the experiences that other First Nations have had in the province. Why do you think you'd need this?'" he said.

"We essentially are their liaison to the provincial and the federal Emergency Preparedness Canada. We do not make the plans for them. We do not take any jurisdiction or authority for them. When the events occur, we go in and give guidance and help in saying, 'Okay, here's maybe what you could do, what you should do, but it's up to you to do that. How do you want to d that? Do you want to declare it a local state of emergency? Here's the appropriate action to take.'"

The approach Parenteau takes is pretty much the same as the one taken by the FNESS-get the support of chief and council, have the community appoint a director of disaster services and look at the community's history in terms of major emergencies that have come up in the past.

"The way this is all structured is pretty much in line with the way a provincial jurisdiction would have it, any other town or city in the province. So that allows the community to deal with their jurisdiction as far as their local authorities. So they're in control of the whole process. We simply allow them the guidelines to say, 'Okay, here's what we should focus on for disaster services. Here's what our reality is,'" Parenteau said. "Then you take their administration or department heads or managers, depending on what title they give them, and utilize those directors or managers or a committee to say, 'Okay, social services will do this, health will do this, education will do this.' You know, what kind of resources do we have? How can we all work together in the process in the event something happens?"

The First Nations also receive training in basic emergency preparedness, evacuation, setting up an emergency operation centre and site management.

"So we take them through what policies and procedures should unfold when an event happens," he said.

Parenteau is in his eleventh year working to help First Nations prepare for emergencies, and he's seen the difference having an emergency plan in place can make to a community during a crisis.

"I have had 13 experiences with First Nations and major events, whether they be floods, fires, evacuations. And in 10 of the cases, they've had a plan and it has worked. Like everything else, it takes practice and we do exercises with them, but it depends on who's there on a given day. So it's not always 100 per cent, because nothing ever is, he said.

"There was a lot more organization and communication, and communication is a big issue when it comes to disasters, about who calls who, who should be called in. So you predetermine where the committee is going to meet, so all your administration [is gathered together]. You're going to predetermine where an evacuation centre's going to be, for example, or a reception centre where people can go to... so it definitely helps," he said.

He estimates that about 80 per cent of Alberta's First Nation communities have developed and implemented emergency plans.

In the end, having an emergency plan in place can better prepare a community to do what has to be done when an emergency arises. "A community can set up an evacuation centre, they can evacuate people, they can get people out of harm's way. And that's the priority behind the plan and the services, is saving lives. The buildings and everything else, through negotiation and other issues and fundraising, those things can be replaced," Parenteau said. "But lives can't."