Image Credit: File Image/CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

COVID-19 & HIGH WATER

City of Kamloops Emergency Operations Centre preparing for parallel emergencies

Apr 23, 2020 | 4:18 PM

KAMLOOPS — On March 20th, the City of Kamloops declared a State of Local Emergency to help them deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. As that crisis has evolved over the past month, staff have been looking ahead at the possibility another emergency arises, which could complicate matters at the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC).

“What we haven’t really looked at extensively is when you start compounding emergencies upon one another,” Mayor Ken Christian told media on Wednesday. “The circumstance we deal with, with the COVID-19, and in particular, the physical distancing requirements were not something we envisioned when we did our flood response plan or our urban interface fire plan.”

As April winds down and the days get warmer, the EOC will be turning its attention to the possibility of high water throughout the city. Last week the City’s Utility Services Manager Greg Wightman said the small- to medium-sized streams around town are expected to rise as the weather continues to warm up.

“Heffley and Campbell and Noble Creek, Peterson Creek. That’s kind of the next; that’s the mid-elevation snowpack,” Wightman explained. “Those creeks are really quickly impacted by the weather.”

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Historically, those smaller streams tend to reach their peaks early in May. That means if the City needs to intervene to protect homes along those streams, they could be dealing with an unprecedented scenario: two emergencies at the same time.

“Generally, you plan around a response, and you think about the contingencies surrounding that response,” Christian said. “You don’t really overlap them.”

Despite the uniqueness of dealing with a pair of emergencies at once, the mayor has every confidence that the city’s EOC is prepared to handle whatever comes its way.

“They do have redundancy built into all the positions they have at the EOC,” Christian says. “If you’re in planning or logistics or finance or information management, those people aren’t working side-by-each so we can have that redundancy.”

Just another example of an organization adjusting its methods during the COVID-19 pandemic.