Findings of a report determining the state of HRM’s emergency management program was presented to Halifax’s Executive Standing Committee on Monday.
The Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP) framework was used to make the assessment, hoping to build the best possible emergency management program.
“We have a lot of experience responding to emergencies,” said HRM Community Safety Executive Director Bill Moore. “We have a lot of very, very good staff doing a lot of really, really good work. This is not a reflection of that. This is about building the program around it.”
HRM CAO Cathie O’Toole told the executive standing committee that assessing the maturity of emergency management for the city was her priority when she entered her role.
The report shows the HRM’s emergency management program lacks documentation and structure and needs a multi-year strategic plan.
“Right now, we are strong in terms of the fact that we have good people and we are well practiced in terms of responding to emergencies,” said O’Toole. “The resilience piece, though, is of particular concern because without the documentation and without the training, then we may not be resilient if we lost two or three key individuals.”
The report came as a bit of a surprise to some councillors who believed the program was in good order, who now welcome the changes.
“I was pleased to see that some of the work was done in 2020 to get some of the documentation back up, but that so much of that had fallen behind,” said HRM District 15 Coun. Paul Russell. “I’m also pleased to hear that…we’re moving ahead with that.”
The internationally recognized EMAP set of standards used to assess and continuously improve emergency management programs will allow for plans to be updated regularly while providing a roadmap for building the program in the future.
“This is really about creating a sustainable, ongoing piece of work that — as new people come in — they’d be able to sit down with the various plans, read through it, understand the concept of operations, understand where they need to go to get things and be able to kick the tires on it,” said Moore.
Having managed the way through at least four emergency events last year, approval from the Executive Standing Committee for the report recommendations allows City Staff to begin strategic planning.
“We need to make sure that the plans are actually going to be able to be put into operations,” Moore said. “So, that involves talking with a whole lot of stakeholders, communities, levels of government, First Nations communities, private businesses.”
This work is a result of questions raised from the wildfires after-action report, which Moore told Global News his team is taking very seriously as they make sure to build those recommendations into the municipality’s program.