• Personal Preparedness
• Stages in an Evacuation
• Reporting Emergencies

If a major emergency (such as forest fire, flood, hazardous materials spill or other catastrophe) occurs, the RDEK’s Emergency Program kicks into gear and, in a large scale event, an Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) will be activated.

The Emergency Operations Centre is the physical location where representatives come together during an emergency to coordinate response and recovery actions and resources, acting in a support role to emergency response personnel in the field.

The most important thing to understand about the RDEK Emergency Program is that it supports the agencies that are responding to an emergency.  For example, in a forest fire situation, the BC Wildfire Service responds to the fire. The RDEK’s Emergency Program (and EOC) provides the Wildfire Management Branch with the additional support they need gathering resources; coordinates evacuation alerts or orders; provides Emergency Social Services; and, provides information to evacuees, etc.

In the case of flooding, the RDEK has two distinct roles:

• SUPPORT—our Emergency Program activates (if required) to support the responding agency like it would for any major emergency (such as forest fires as outlined in this article).
• RESPONSE—as the local government for the rural areas, the RDEK is also the responding agency that is tasked with dealing with the flooding.  In a municipality, the municipality is responsible for the “response” and the RDEK’s Emergency Program would simply be there to provide the support function (outlined above).

We have  3 Emergency Programs: