Emergency Planners Prepare for Disaster 2010

Canadian Press, November 27, 2008

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Traffic accidents may snarl Vancouver traffic on any day but if that day falls during the 2010 Olympics, the consequences could be a lot more severe.

It's one of the scenarios the emergency management team is planning for as it prepares for the Winter Games. With 15 months left to go before the Olympics, emergency management plans are in good shape, said Kevin Wallinger, the director of emergency management for the city of Vancouver.

"It wasn't so much a matter of planning for the worst-case, we want to plan for the most probable," he said.

Wallinger made the comments after addressing a conference of emergency professionals in Vancouver on Wednesday.

"Whether it's power outages, winter storms, traffic congestion, accidents those sorts of things, those are the certainly the ones we need to make sure we get right."

That's not to say that major events such as earthquakes or biological hazards aren't on the radar.

Wallinger recently participated in a earthquake simulation event in California, where he said he learned some valuable lessons, and they're also working with health authorities on what to do if there was a major disease or chemical outbreak.

While Wallinger said emergency planners are always working to ensure they have the capability to address any situation, he acknowledged the Olympics pose some unique challenges.

"Some of the complexities will be just additional members of the public that may not know how the city operates, how they might need to look after themselves during an emergency or an event," Wallinger said.

Essentially, emergency planning for the Olympics is a matter of ramping up existing plans to take into account the thousands more people in the city in February of 2010, said John Oakley, director of integrated public safety for emergency management B.C.

"If you have to evacuate a population for whatever reason, how do we take care of the people that are evacuated whether it be out of a motel, hotel or venue site?," he said in an interview.

"We'll have a number of large venues operating at the same time, that's sheer numbers, so we have to make certain we have enough resources to deal with those potential situations."

Keeping routes accessible is part of the city's transportation strategy for the Olympics, which was released on Tuesday.

More than 650 blocks of the city will be affected, from the elimination of parking all the way to a complete closure of routes for security reasons.

Overall responsibility for handling emergencies during the 2010 Olympics will rest with the Integrated Security Unit, a multi-agency group being spearheaded by the RCMP.

The need to liaise with the ISU has been the biggest change to how utility company Terasen handles emergency planning, a company spokeswoman said.

"The key thing that we're doing is taking our plans that we exercise regularly and we're integrating those with others," said Joyce Wagenaar, director of corporate communication for Terasen.

"With key information that they have available, such as transportation routes and a variety of other pieces, the co-ordination is key," she added.

Neither Wagenaar nor a spokeswoman for B.C. Hydro would comment on whether their emergency plans are changing in light of the heightened risk that comes with the Olympics, such as the potential for terrorism.

But it's an issue definitely on the table as the ISU works with dozens of agencies in table-top exercises to prepare for the Games.

In regular threat assessments, the ISU has identified both local and international groups that could post a danger to the Games.

Even federal government agencies are preparing themselves for possible emergencies - the department of Indian and Northern Affairs recently awarded a $100,000 contract for someone to put their emergency preparedness plans in place.

On the other side of the border, U.S. officials are also putting together their own strategy, committing over a $400 million dollars to planning exercises and a co-ordination centre to be housed in Washington state.

That's more than double the initially suggested budget for security for the 2010 Olympics.

A final budget has yet to be released.