Dawne Young knows what it is like to answer the call when emergencies strike.
A retired 911 dispatcher, Young spent years answering calls for help, from house fires to crimes in progress.
But when the Bald Range wildfire in Summerland broke out, it was an emergency that she believes the province could have prepared better for.
Young said when the fire broke out on Friday, Aug. 7, not everyone in her family received the emergency alert.
“My family members were all standing beside each other, and one got it, and the other one didn’t,” she said.
Her troubles didn’t end there, she said.
Once she fled and found a place to stay at a friend’s house, she tried to register as an evacuee.
She said she downloaded the app, and was told she would be verified Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“The following day I did get verified, so I was able to get online to register, then it told me to proceed to the reception centre — which I thought was the whole point of registering online, was so that you didn’t have to go to the reception centre,” Young said.
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What followed was several phone calls, being put on hold and conflicting information. Young said the experience was stressful and frustrating.
“When people are fleeing, they need help right away — not 12 hours later,” she said.
Young is not blaming the volunteers that run emergency support services. Instead, she believes the province needs to invest more into emergency management.
“I just think that we have had enough big fires in the Okanagan. It is not going to get any better with climate change — the way things are, this is our way of life now,” she said.
“People need to be prepared and the government needs to be prepared.”
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During a visit to Penticton, Premier David Eby said the current emergency support services system is a lot better than previous years, but admitted it still has its faults.
His government committed to an after-action review of how emergency support services dealt with the aftermath of the fire.
“We are going to take the lessons learned from this fire and apply them and make sure it’s better,” he said.
The premier said the review will include a pool of experts, including those with expertise in wildfires and local government.
Some wildfire researchers say troubles with the emergency alert system are not entirely uncommon.
“Sometimes the communication systems can be overloaded, so text alerts that are supposed to go out, in fact don’t make it to residents,” said University of British Columbia researcher Kathryn McConnell.
“In other cases, fires can happen at the same time as electricity outages, so … accessing television for alerts and landlines for alerts may not be possible.”
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McConnell added that wildfires typically start in rural and remote regions, areas where cell phone coverage may be spotty or non-existent altogether.
To combat this issue, McConnell said the province should look into analog alert sirens as an alternative to telecommunications-based alerts. She said the systems are already used in countries like France to alert people about fires and floods.
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But she cautions that a good emergency management system should include more than one method.
“I think big picture the goal with these systems is redundancy —so that if one mode fails, for instance if the telecommunications method fails, than you still have these backup modes,” she said.
