Emergency Management BC is British Columbia’s lead coordinating agency for all emergency management activities, including planning, training, testing and exercising.
The Scenario
In 2016, Ink’s founder Lianne participated in Exercise Coastal Response, EMBC’s full-scale earthquake and tsunami response exercise–the first held in Western Canada. The three-day training was designed to test the BC Immediate Response Plan (IRP), which outlines the steps that the province and its partners will undertake in the immediate aftermath of a massive earthquake.
The exercise scenario was based on a magnitude 9.0 earthquake resulting in a rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of southwestern B.C., causing destruction in major urban centres and rural areas, and a 20-metre tsunami making landfall on the west coast of Vancouver Island minutes after the initial quaking.
The exercise was conducted in regional operations centres across Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland, and included real-time and simulated activities involving functions such as emergency operations, logistics, medical care, public information, operational communications, and care for the needs of those affected or displaced.
Our Role
Serving as a representative of Western Canada Marine Response Corp., Lianne undertook the role of Communications Evaluator in the Provincial Emergency Coordination Centre in Sidney, B.C. This included observing the activation of a fully-functional communications unit, and providing guidance to the unit in their strategic and tactical execution throughout the exercise.
Our Work
Elements under her purview included evaluating incoming and outgoing communications, fluency in Incident Command System, operational efficiency and agency integration within the unit, collaboration with response as a whole, and sustained response transition planning. At exercise’s end, she provided feedback on the unit’s work, and recommendations for future planning for exercises and response operations.
