Ensuring communities are prepared for disaster

The five-year agreement between the Canadian Red Cross and Indigenous Services Canada, regarding support of First Nations impacted by disasters, includes an emergency planning component. For this component, the Red Cross was tasked with supporting all interested First Nations in the creation or development of new, or refinement of existing, emergency preparedness plans.

After the first four years of the agreement, which was signed in 2017, 23 First Nations have completed the process, 33 are at some stage in the process, and two have declined participation.

Completing the process means having a community emergency plan ready to go when disaster strikes. Most of these plans include details on activating a community emergency operations centre.

In working with most of the First Nations in the province, our Disaster Risk Reduction team has heard from numerous communities about how it important it is to have all of the basic supplies that are needed to operate an emergency operations centre organized and in place ahead of time. Community officials told us that in those critical first few hours of a response, leadership would greatly benefit from having all necessary supplies in one, secure place.

Through private donor funding to the Red Cross, we were able to put together the necessary supplies to be able to provide each community with an emergency response team kit. The kit ensures a community’s emergency response team has many of the tools it needs to respond quickly and set up an emergency operations centre. It is recommended to keep this kit in a safe and accessible place, with a copy of the community emergency response plan.

Those communities that have completed their emergency planning processes have already received their kits, while the remaining communities will receive these kits over the next year.

The kits, which come in a large, sturdy, rolling lockbox, is filled with numerous supplies, including: pens, paper, other stationary, necessary forms, a USB with the community’s emergency plan on it, an extension cord, tape, garbage bags, safety vests and a first-aid kit.