Community leaders from Altona and Rhineland, including the local fire chief, mayor of Altona, Rhineland reeve, and public information officer, took a trip to Winnipeg together last month for the betterment of the area. They attended the Manitoba Disaster Management Conference, which takes place every 18 months.
Perry Batchelor, the Altona and Rhineland municipal emergency coordinator, says the conference was “well worth attending.” It had over 500 delegates.
The tragic Carberry crash
The event featured keynote speakers and breakout sessions. David Bosiak, the mayor of Dauphin, gave a memorable speech. He explained the community’s ongoing grieving process after the devastating bus crash in Carberry, Manitoba last year, in which 17 people lost their lives. Some of the victims resided in Dauphin.
“Lots and lots of food for thought there,” says Batchelor. “The community is obviously still grieving,” adding that the city of Lethbridge reached out to the region to offer its support.
“It just kind of shows that in a time of need, we do look after each other,” he says.
Discussing the Carberry crash also led to a broader discussion of how to address community-wide grief. Bosiak’s speech reinforced a plan that Batchelor had already been working toward in Altona and Rhineland.
“They set up these centres where people could go to receive counselling, and . . . they actually found in this situation that a lot of people didn't show up. They had very small numbers, and they were concerned,” says Batchelor. “They found that people were grieving at home, so then it [tuned into] more of an outreach, and they did their best with regards to that.”
Batchelor has recently added local clergy to his team for the purpose of outreach in a similar situation. The plan is to create a network of churches that can offer support should the need arise.
“It's not like we're going to have all the answers. Nobody does,” he says. “All we can do is simply plan for the worst and hope for the best and try to help the community through a difficult situation if that's what we end up in.”
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Bosiak’s speech also encouraged Batchelor to consider how to prepare for the timeline of grieving after a tragic event. He says that there is still work to be done when it comes to implementing strategies to avoid burnout and fatigue in community members who offer services for a prolonged period.
Communication during disaster
Batchelor says that another portion of the day was devoted to the topic of “high stress, high concern” situations.
“Some of the takeaways from that was how much you give people as far as communicating with them during a disaster,” he says. “This has been studied by various highly educated folks, and [they] came up with sort of three messages. If we think back to . . . the COVID times, . . . we had three messages that kept being sent out to us by the media: Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Get vaccinated. 3 messages. That was it, and it just kept coming and coming so that we could process it.”
In a high state of stress, it is more difficult to process information, so reducing the message to the essentials assists with reception. Batchelor notes that the same concept is behind the three-number “911” for emergency calls.
“Outside of an emergency, they say that a brain can sort of digest and process seven points, so we go from three to seven when we're more relaxed,” he says.
The conference also included a tornado response tabletop organized by Winnipeg’s Emergency Management Team, which Batchelor says will help prepare for next summer’s severe weather.
Ready for a disaster
The Manitoba Disaster Management Conference also underlined an important message that Batchelor says he often repeats.
“I know I've harped on this before, but preparedness is really a personal and a household agenda item. I know people say, ‘It's not going to happen,’ or, ‘We'll be fine,’ but [in] the first 72 hours of a disaster . . . it is going to be on you and your family to make sure that you're in a position to be okay,” he says, adding that this is the case whether it is a tornado, flood, or some type of evacuation. “In that first 72 hours, you can well imagine our resources are going to be strapped.”
Batchelor urges the community to consider how to prepare for an unexpected event.
“What is your plan to make sure you're okay for those first 72 hours until the lights are turned back on? [It’s the] same with an ice storm. [We] need to really think about how we're going to make this work. How am I going to heat my house for 72 hours when it's 40 below? It's entirely possible,’ he says. “That's [what] I would like to communicate.”
Batchelor would also like to direct residents to Altona Connect and Rhineland Connect accessible through the Town of Altona website and the Municipality of Rhineland website.
“It's a free service. You will get alerts and updates, so if we were to get a situation where we had a tornado strike in town, you would get an alert on that, and then you would receive your updates,” he says. “It also is the way that the administrative offices would communicate things like water main breaks, or if garbage pickup was disrupted. They can get those kinds of messages out to you quickly.”
Batchelor says it’s also a way to be alerted instantly about boil advisories and if there are any areas of town that should be avoided.
In the end, although it is not pleasant to think of how things could go wrong, it’s important to plan in case they do. Attending events like the Manitoba Disaster Management Conference arms the community with ways of protecting itself long before tragedy strikes.
With files from Candace Derksen