SASKATOON EXPRESS - August 201517, - Page Volume 12, Issue 33, Week of 17-23, August 20151
Saskatoonʼs REAL Community Newspaper
Training session photo First responders tend to a “victim” of a car accident
Take me to your Command Centre New emergency system enters last phase
Joanne Paulson Saskatoon Express ay Unrau likes to tell people that Saskatoon is even safer than Greenland. During the Second World War, two planes crashed in the far-northern country, both by pilots in training. Saskatoon, by comparison, has only had one plane crash, quite recently on Lenore Drive and Wanuskewin Road. Disasters may be few and far between in this city, and Unrau’s lighthearted point about Greenland illustrates that. But make no mistake: the City’s director of emergency planning takes public safety very seriously. So seriously that he is now fully involved in the final phases of setting up a new emergency management process. When completely functional after the training beginning this fall, it will significantly change the way Saskatoon handles emergencies. It all started after a major blizzard in January 2007, which most Saskatonians are unlikely to forget. “We weren’t prepared,” he said in an interview held in the emergency operations command centre (EOC) in the fire hall on Attridge Drive. Since that time, Unrau and others, in-
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cluding emergency measures co-ordinator Anthony Tataryn, have been revamping their emergency response protocols and set up the command centre. Now, Unrau is very close to finalizing a new team approach. “What a lot of people don’t realize is when an organization has an emergency plan, it is built for their organization,” he said. When the situation gets bigger than anticipated, “the assumption is that someone else will take care of the rest.” “What emergency management does is when every emergency plan for every organization meets its maximum, we coordinate all the gaps that are left over.” In other words, emergency preparedness teams connect all the dots to get the various local organizations functioning again. That means knowing where all the fire trucks and police cars are; where the power is off; what is going on at the water treatment plant; and all the other arms and legs to the city’s functionality. It sounds complex, and in some respects it is; but a lot of it boils down to basic planning and communication, and that means getting the City’s leaders and emergency planners into one location during a major emergency — the functional, but not fancy, EOC. “It’s not like the Starship Enterprise,”
said Unrau. “It’s a situational awareness room. “We don’t look at tornados or droughts or floods as being anything really special. You don’t do things differently. You don’t evacuate differently in a flood; you don’t put out a fire differently in a flood. All those tasks for first responders are identical.” The difference in a widespread emergency is “you’re doing them in a context or environment where you don’t have all your resources available.”
the right people know the information they need to do their job,” said Unrau. “My purpose here during an emergency or disaster is to help people . . . understand the process. “When there’s an emergency, everyone’s brain shrinks about three sizes. They just default to what they know. You lose 10 IQ points. It’s just what happens. So we have to make sure we use this room as a way to distribute information.” It all has to be very visual, to make the process easier to follow when even IQ points are falling. Communication: Task One Everything is colour coded. Each of Knowing that communication is one three banks of desks in the command of the biggest problems to overcome in a centre have differently coloured vests restdisaster largely led the design of the new ing on the chairs, complete with nametag emergency process. pockets, ready for donning. Unrau is a student of Dennis Mileti, The blue vests on one side of the room whose 1999 book Disasters by Design not- represent the planning group, which is ed that successful local emergency manage- about displaying, verifying and collecting ment involves “integration of the emergen- information, said Unrau. cy management office into the day-to-day In the middle of the room reside the activities and structure of local government; orange-red-coloured vests. These are extensive relationships with other commu- donned by the bosses — the fire chief, ponity organizations; and concrete outputs to lice chief and others who manage various the community, such as the maintenance of tactical areas. an emergency operations center.” On the other side of the room are the All of that has been integrated into the yellow vests, reserved for the procurement new team plan. people. “This room is all about making sure (Continued on page 4)