Calgary committee hears on increasing complexity of emergency management

Emergencies are more complex and “cross and blur” intergovernmental boundaries, Calgary's emergency management committee said.

The Calgary Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) delivered its 2023 Annual Status of Emergency Preparedness Report to committee members on February 8.

CEMA chief Sue Henry noted a busy year for the agency, with much of its time spent on response and recovery deployments. Chief Henry said Alberta's fire season has started early and that will require the deployment of firefighting resources across the province. Canada's Task Force 2 – based in Calgary – filled 79 incident management positions across Alberta last spring.

More than 4,000 people arrived in Calgary at relief centers when wildfires ravaged the Northwest Territories over the summer, forcing more than 22,000 people from their homes.

“(It's) an incredibly complex response that crossed provincial and territorial boundaries when calling on our services to meet the needs of the many vulnerable people who come to Calgary,” Henry said.

This action activated the Emergency Response Center for 25 days. Along with 4,000 people, 223 pets joined their owners at 50 hotel sites (more than 5,000 rooms were used). More than 12,000 transit tickets and 7,000 meal vouchers have been delivered to evacuees, Chief Henry said.

Such cross-border activity is one factor in the dramatic complexity of emergency response, Henry said.

“Even the incidents we are responding to are becoming more complex incidents, which are closely related to social, technological and environmental factors,” he said.

“They are crossing and blurring jurisdictional boundaries between communities. This complexity requires us to take a multidisciplinary approach, use expertise from different sectors and incorporate advanced technologies to improve forecasting, communication and mitigation strategies.”

Henry also said that given the effects of a changing climate, they cannot rely on past events to estimate the risk of future disasters.

“Climate change is causing more frequent events, longer-lasting events and extreme weather events,” he said.

Lessons learned from the 2023 responses

7th district. Terry Wong asked Chief Henry about the key lessons learned from the cross-jurisdictional response to the NWT fires.

One big lesson was the implementation of emergency social services programs, Chief Henry said.

“We have a lot of work to do until 2024 to balance this program to be able to handle the very large, very rapid influx of people that we've had,” he said.

“We need to do some work on our registration system to make sure we can better track where people are. We currently have a paper-based system, which is not the best system for us.”

Committee Chairman, District 8 District. Courtney Walcott quizzed Chief Henry about dozens of outside partners and their roles in handling large-capacity incidents.

Walcott: “Do you have any feedback on our capabilities to help us be future ready?” – he asked.

Chief Henry said it's a balance they struggle with, especially when the Emergency Center is open 54 days a week. He said this applies to both City of Calgary employees and social services.

“We've had a lot of conversations over the summer months about what it's doing to them and how they're drawn to resources and how we can support those parts,” Chief Henry said.

“So I would call it an ongoing conversation, but as we open the EOC and as we respond to other jurisdictions for support, it's something we need to be very aware of.

Outside council chambers, Chief Henry acknowledged the complexity of the response and Calgary's responsibility as a major city in the region to help ease the burden on resources. She says it's difficult to consider how to respond to employees in different ways.

“Every time we respond, we learn something that we can put into the Calgary context to make us stronger than Calgary,” he said.

He said when he responded in a jurisdiction outside of Calgary, they were covered by other government orders.