Quesnel City Council is seeking provincial funding on several fronts to deal with future wildfires or other emergencies.
One of those, as City Manager Byron Johnson explains, is money for an Emergency Planning Coordinator position…
“Who would come in say OK, let’s get all the key stakeholders together, lets test these systems, lets make sure it’s all working, that you guys have all been talking and that it’s current.”
Johnson says this person could be an employee of the province.
Other suggestions include ongoing funding support for emergency planning in general as well as money to modernize the Emergency Social Services Evacuee Registration.
Johnson says the current model is quite outdated…
“Paper based, highly repetitive, required people to stand in line for hours and hours, many times through the emergency process because our process is designed for short term emergencies where people come in, you get a voucher for two or three days, you go away, that’s it.”
The final two requests are for ongoing funding assistance for smaller airports which may become critical resources during emergency responses, like in Quesnel this summer, and to investigate the legislative changes required if a sub-regional approach was the desired way to go in an emergency situation.