MD OF BIGHORN – The MD of Bighorn is moving forward with a newly approved emergency management bylaw and municipal emergency management plan, with work underway to hire a consultant to create updated evacuation plans for its communities.
During the December council meeting, elected officials approved all three readings for a new emergency management bylaw, which sets out that the municipality will use the provincially mandated incident command system into the future. Council also approved a new emergency management plan, which provides emergency response guidelines for the municipal district.
Director of emergency management Rick Lyster presented the new bylaw, which was recommended as a result of work done by consultant Montane Forest Management Ltd. to review the MD of Bighorn's emergency management policies and bylaws in 2020.
"We went through all of our bylaws related to emergency management," Lyster said. "One of the things in the local authority emergency management regulation is that we follow the command and control system prescribed by the director of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency.
"That command and control system is the incident command system."
Provincial regulations require all municipalities to use this specific system if and when an emergency situation occurs. Neighbouring communities like Canmore and Banff have already adopted the incident command system.
"We will be working on the same system as all other municipalities, so if we have a big event and we do require assistance from other municipalities, they should be able to come right in and slide into our organization," Lyster said. "If we send people to assist another municipality, they will fit into that system as well."
The province's local authority emergency management regulation came into force on Jan. 1, 2020 and sets out requirements for emergency management committees, emergency management agencies, regional collaboration and emergency management plans.
Stew Walkinshaw, with Montane Forest Management, said the new bylaw and the approval of the municipal emergency management plan means the MD of Bighorn now meets all provincial requirements set out in the regulation that came into effect a year ago.
The plan sets out how an emergency command centre is activated and terminated; the procedure for declaring a state of local emergency; response priorities; procedures for releasing information; post incident actions; roles and responsibilities for each position included in the plan; hazard specific action plans; and the roles and procedures for recovery.
The newly approved plan also covers evacuation procedures on how to declare or rescind an order to evacuate. However, Walkinshaw noted that is not the same as having a comprehensive evacuation plan. He recommended the MD of Bighorn undertake to update and comprehensively review its evacuation plan, which would be a separate companion document to the municipal management plan and emergency social services plan.
Walkinshaw recommended specific evacuation procedures for each hamlet and rural area; maps of each area showing vulnerable populations, reception centres, assembly points and evacuation routes; as well as data tables containing the number of dwelling units, people and special populations contained in each.
Walkinshaw said last summer a group was formed to do a hazard and risk vulnerability assessment for the municipality.
"We ranked all the different hazards that could occur in the MD of Bighorn and at the end of the day we ended up doing hazard specific action plans for the top six," he said. "Those hazard specific plans provide an overview of the procedures to be taken and then it gives a function specific checklist for each of the main positions in the emergency coordination centre during that particular emergency."
The top hazards included a dam release; wildland or interface fire; groundwater or overland flooding; hazardous material spill; pandemic; and weather events.
Chief Administrative Officer Robert Ellis said administration was pleased with the work done to modernize the bylaw and plan, as well as to bring it in line with provincial regulations.
On Tuesday (Jan. 26) during a special meeting of council, Ellis recommended that council approve a request for proposal process to develop the evacuation plan and sole-source the $25,000 contract to Montane Forest Management.
He said the 2020 Devil's Head wildfire resulted in parts of the municipality being put on evacuation notice. While the need to evacuate residents didn't materialize, it was clear to administration that a plan was needed.
"An updated and more comprehensive evacuation plan is recommended," Ellis said. "With the Devil's Head fire and dealing with the potential for evacuation, a document about evacuating people in that area, or in any area of the MD, would have been a benefit to us."
