I’d emailed my alderman this summer to ask for a copy of the disaster response plan for Calgary, in light of recent events. I figured it would be a Good Idea™ to give the plan a once-over before a disaster struck, since by then we’d be too busy feasting on the goo in each other’s skulls to read the instructions about how to evacuate a city of 1 million people.
I just got a response back, after it was forwarded to the Fire Department. The response had a boilerplate “this is confidential, intended for the recipient of this email only” but that’s just silly. Here’s the response I got.
Mr. Norman,
I apologize for the delay in getting back to you on this matter and acknowledge your concern on such an important topic with all that we have witnessed in world events recently.
To answer your question, the Calgary Peacetime Disaster Plan is not a public document. It is held by heads of the various agencies that would be required to respond in an emergency, Civic Administration leaders and our elected officials. Unfortunately, the response plans and capabilities of most major organizations, including municipalities has been removed from the public domain following a worldwide change in security vigilance following the events of September 11, 2001.
Calgary’s Plan is based on an all-hazards approach that outlines a coordinated response to those incidents most likely to have a major impact on our city. The incidents range from floods and other natural disasters to “man-made” events such as a hazardous materials spill. These events form the subject matter for regular exercises that are developed to practice the communication and team decision making capabilities of our agency heads, and to ensure that the plans and capabilities of the resources in those agencies is adequate to deal with the emergencies most likely to affect us.
As far as the specific evacuation plans that you refer to, Calgary Disaster Services would work with the Calgary Police Service, EMS, Calgary Fire, Calgary Transit, Calgary Roads, the RCMP and other stakeholders to expedite an evacuation in a time of emergency based on the details of that incident. For example, it would not be prudent to say that in a disaster residents of Tuscany should evacuate south via Nose Hill Drive and Stoney Trail to the Trans Canada Highway and out of town. That information may lead you into the hazard area for the incident.
The City of Calgary’s Disaster Social Services and the Canadian Red Cross have procedures in place for establishing reception centres where citizens can register and have their food, clothing and shelter needs accommodated in an emergency. They would also provide assistance with locating relatives who may be separated from their families.
There are many things that you can do to enhance your own preparedness, including:
- Develop a supply of necessities to provide for you and your family for the first 72 hours after the onset of an emergency. Access for responders may be limited after the initial impact of an incident, so the best thing you can do to aid your survival capabilities is to have water, food and medication stores for all those in your household.
- Establish a plan within your network of family and friends to contact each other and ensure their safety in an emergency. This can also include sharing the duties to contact or check on any family members who may have special needs.
I hope this helps answer some of your concerns with regards to Calgary’s state of preparedness. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions.
Tony M. Messer
A/Coordinator
Calgary Disaster Services
If our ability to respond to an emergency, and to keep the city safe from “terrorists” is based on keeping the response plan a secret, we’re pretty screwed. Security through obscurity isn’t security.
I’ve created a (so far empty) wiki page in case anyone thinks it’s a good idea to have a response plan available to the people affected.
Here’s my response to Tony (copied to the Alderman):
Tony, thank you for your response. I am more than a little concerned about the need for secrecy regarding the disaster response plan. Security through obscurity is not security (or, worse, is a false sense of security). It would be better for the plan to be a public document so that the people of Calgary knew what was expected of them, and Calgary Disaster Services would have to prepare to truly secure any valuable plans/assets rather than hoping nobody knows about them.
I hope you’ll reconsider the decision to keep the response plan a secret. I’ve created a wiki page at
http://wiki.ucalgary.ca/page/CalgaryDisasterResponsePlan
in case any members of the public want to coordinate a plan on their own.
I’d emailed my alderman this summer to ask for a copy of the disaster response plan for Calgary, in light of recent events. I figured it would be a Good Idea™ to give the plan a once-over before a disaster struck, since by then we’d be too busy feasting on the goo in each other’s skulls to read the instructions about how to evacuate a city of 1 million people.
I just got a response back, after it was forwarded to the Fire Department. The response had a boilerplate “this is confidential, intended for the recipient of this email only” but that’s just silly. Here’s the response I got.
Mr. Norman,
I apologize for the delay in getting back to you on this matter and acknowledge your concern on such an important topic with all that we have witnessed in world events recently.
To answer your question, the Calgary Peacetime Disaster Plan is not a public document. It is held by heads of the various agencies that would be required to respond in an emergency, Civic Administration leaders and our elected officials. Unfortunately, the response plans and capabilities of most major organizations, including municipalities has been removed from the public domain following a worldwide change in security vigilance following the events of September 11, 2001.
Calgary’s Plan is based on an all-hazards approach that outlines a coordinated response to those incidents most likely to have a major impact on our city. The incidents range from floods and other natural disasters to “man-made” events such as a hazardous materials spill. These events form the subject matter for regular exercises that are developed to practice the communication and team decision making capabilities of our agency heads, and to ensure that the plans and capabilities of the resources in those agencies is adequate to deal with the emergencies most likely to affect us.
As far as the specific evacuation plans that you refer to, Calgary Disaster Services would work with the Calgary Police Service, EMS, Calgary Fire, Calgary Transit, Calgary Roads, the RCMP and other stakeholders to expedite an evacuation in a time of emergency based on the details of that incident. For example, it would not be prudent to say that in a disaster residents of Tuscany should evacuate south via Nose Hill Drive and Stoney Trail to the Trans Canada Highway and out of town. That information may lead you into the hazard area for the incident.
The City of Calgary’s Disaster Social Services and the Canadian Red Cross have procedures in place for establishing reception centres where citizens can register and have their food, clothing and shelter needs accommodated in an emergency. They would also provide assistance with locating relatives who may be separated from their families.
There are many things that you can do to enhance your own preparedness, including:
- Develop a supply of necessities to provide for you and your family for the first 72 hours after the onset of an emergency. Access for responders may be limited after the initial impact of an incident, so the best thing you can do to aid your survival capabilities is to have water, food and medication stores for all those in your household.
- Establish a plan within your network of family and friends to contact each other and ensure their safety in an emergency. This can also include sharing the duties to contact or check on any family members who may have special needs.
I hope this helps answer some of your concerns with regards to Calgary’s state of preparedness. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further questions.
Tony M. Messer
A/Coordinator
Calgary Disaster Services
If our ability to respond to an emergency, and to keep the city safe from “terrorists” is based on keeping the response plan a secret, we’re pretty screwed. Security through obscurity isn’t security.
I’ve created a (so far empty) wiki page in case anyone thinks it’s a good idea to have a response plan available to the people affected.
Here’s my response to Tony (copied to the Alderman):
Tony, thank you for your response. I am more than a little concerned about the need for secrecy regarding the disaster response plan. Security through obscurity is not security (or, worse, is a false sense of security). It would be better for the plan to be a public document so that the people of Calgary knew what was expected of them, and Calgary Disaster Services would have to prepare to truly secure any valuable plans/assets rather than hoping nobody knows about them.
I hope you’ll reconsider the decision to keep the response plan a secret. I’ve created a wiki page at
http://wiki.ucalgary.ca/page/CalgaryDisasterResponsePlan
in case any members of the public want to coordinate a plan on their own.
Related
That’s somewhat disturbing. Not surprising, but disturbing.
Yeah – I’m a little bit freaked out that the safety of the city in an emergency relies on “Uh – I sure hope nobody sat down and thought hard about what we’re going to do, because then we’d be in DANGER!”
Also, I was stunned about the “following the events of September 11…” bullshit. Bad things have happened for as long as we’ve walked upright. September 11 is such a copout for bad planning or abuses of civil liberties. Sharing a plan (maybe not the whole plan) with the population is just plain GOOD PLANNING. When the shit hits the fan, I’d sure as hell want to have at least a rough idea of what’s expected of me BEFORE trying to filter through chaos and confusion.
I’m not comfortable placing my family’s safety in the hands of some mystery plan, and hoping that communication doesn’t break down in an emergency.
Completely agreed.
I’m currently enroled in the police and security program here in Medicine Hat. And i have been assigned to put togther an emergency response plan for the city of MH. I’m upset/shocked to find that Calgary’s response plan is a ‘secret’.
I’m assuming that by not informing/sharing with the population, at minimun the outline of the response plan, this would have a greater consequence of panic, confusion (to name a few) then if you were too share it. What’s so secret about an emergency plan, it’s for everyone’s well being.
Helen – my thoughts exactly. The email from Tony sort of implied they were worried about terrorists interfering with the execution of the plans or something. Like it would be hard for them to guess where to toss a dirty bomb in the middle of a city-wide evacuation or something.
I was really hoping they would be able to provide at least a skeleton of a plan – who to listen to, where to go first, what to take, where to take it, etc… But, instead it’s “Well, folks, you’re just going to have to trust us and hope nothing breaks down when It Happens” Definitely scary. Because communication never breaks down, especially in a crisis…
Hi,
As a proud Canadian and a professionally trained and qualified emergency manager, I find these kinds of situations very common in Canada. The situation of fear and knowledge deficites around emergency preparedness and those who claim
safety – in the situations where no disaster event has tested a plan or impacted a program.
How can someone claim success, when there has not really been a stress test of a program?
How do we as Canadians measure our level of emergency preparedness?
How can Municipalities be confident their programs are adequate, when they may have systemic weaknesses which, if brought to awareness, may motivate the administrators to focus on strengthening an emergency management program.
The answer is here, we provide independent objective science based assessments to organizations in Canada.
We have betss tested this in British Columbia, with the most critical government health care servic e delivery agencies.
There s now available a revolutionary tool to strengthen an emergency management program, based on true current best practices, objectively and not emotion.
There exists a science, similar to environmental science that deals with the study of disasters and their impacts of our communities. This has been in evolution since 1916, and the first formal academic program was started by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1982. I have completed a four year disaster science degree, and join the select few people in Canada who have achieved this level of expertise.
How do Mayors or senior administrators measure their program to ensure the public can be confident in the assumptions manse in the program?
What standards are used as a guide for the program developments?
We can determine with a high degree of certainty, using science based analysis, to determine if Calgary(or any municipality, Province) is more close to a Florida or a New Orleans?
If you or your staff are considering running home in a major disaster or emergency, you are not alone. Our recent research has shown that a high degree of Canadian workers are actively planning to – Bolt – home in an emergency.
The mayor and senior administrators, were very confident prior to Katrina, in New Orleans that their communities were adequately prepared, yet they failed to pass an assessment (Similar to CEMP we provide at EMPG INc.) and thus demonstrate with a dramatic result, the failure of some who were not able to comprehend the magnitude of their vulnerability.
Please visit our site,
NOTE: Many of the disasters that occur in Canada, keep repeating the same results as we are not taking seriously the application of what we have already learned from other disaster events. Until the local emergency managers and disaster planners, accept the use of the assessment tools that have been developed, they will never realize the full benefits available to them. If they continue the way that they have – it will take at least 18 years to evolve to the level of development which is available now with the CEMP.
Further: “It is not about testing the local planners for knowledge or skills; it is a common misconception of many planners to avaoid an independent analysis- for fear of being seen as failing their jobs. We have found many times in our work in Canada, that we stress in all our work, that we are looking at systemic weaknesses rather than staff.
The only staff weakness we have remotely detected, may be from a lack of knowledge and understanding of the importance of standards of measure and a clear understanding of the benefits gained from an assessment. These provide fact based data (amunition) to help the sstaff justify and present a persuasive argument for increased resources for development of their program. Many agencies have actually increased their staff as a measure to implement some of their realizations.
“Many emergency coordinators self assess their programs as very good to good. After as little as 1 hour of work with our consultants, these same participants have always commented, “We did not realize how much there is to a complete program!”
I am passionate and want to provide the highest quality of information to you and your local emergency managers.
Please do not hesitate to contact me with any quaestions or comments.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Respectfully,
Gordon Redmond, B.Sc., ABCP
http://www.empg.ca