Saskatchewan’s ombudsman is calling for an immediate improvement in the provincial government’s response times to wildfire evacuees.
Sharon Pratchler held a news conference Tuesday morning, saying she’s received numerous complaints and spoken to evacuees at emergency shelters. She’s found those looking for a place to sleep are being told a response could take as long as 24 hours, while others have been told answers to their needs could take up to four days.
“The delays in response and access to services to meet basic needs, a safe place to sleep and food, has fueled distrust,” she said. “People are confused, frustrated and overwhelmed by a lack of information on how to access services. The information has been inconsistent or hard to get.”
Pratchler also noted many evacuees are expressing concerns over not getting timely financial support, leaving them to make difficult decisions over “how they’re going to spend their last dollars.”
She said she has at least nine pages of names of evacuees who have contacted her office, and her staff are also operating a 24-hour phone line for firefighters so they could “immediately reach a person.”
“Words that should not be used right now by any government or public entity (are) ‘we are working on it’. The time for working on it has passed. An immediate response is required,” she said. ” The needs are immediate, and the response must be immediate.”
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The ombudsman is planning a “systemic review” of the government’s response in the months to come.
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However, she is immediately calling on the Saskatchewan government to implement a list of recommendations to ensure “dignified treatment” of evacuees.
Those recommendations include:
- 24-hour services to ensure evacuees have a safe place to sleep and access to food, and to ensure those services are properly staffed to avoid errors due to exhaustion
- A centralized list of which evacuation centres are hosting communities to allow families to know where their relatives have been sent.
- Provide information to evacuees that is accessible and understandable
- Provide immediate responses to calls to the evacuee hotline
- Improve payments to evacuees, and make them retroactive to the date evacuees left their homes
- Provide critical incident briefings within two hours of total losses of communities
- Provide access to phone services at evacuation sites
- Institute ‘seamless services and equitable services’ no matter where evacuees are being hosted
- Ensure space for doctors from evacuated communities to see their patients
- Provide information to evacuees on how to access or transfer their prescriptions
- Provide activities for children and adults at all evacuation sites
- Provide information on long-term re-housing strategies for those who have lost their homes
Saskatchewan Public Safety Administration President Marlo Pritchard responded to some of the recommendations during a wildfire media briefing Tuesday afternoon.
He said the SPSA is bringing in 14 more staff members to help clear the backlog of people who need help, and the SPSA will be “triaging” those requests based on who needs more immediate assistance. He added payments to evacuees will be retroactive to evacuation dates, and SPSA staff are currently offering supports on-site at seven evacuation centres from 8 a.m. to midnight.
“We acknowledge that there is a gap for those that have self-evacuated, and we are doing our utmost best to fix that,” Pritchard said. “I can tell you that it was a chaotic couple of days, but now that the situation on the response is stabilizing and we are able to reassign staff and upscale some of those support mechanisms, we’re going to absolutely address the backlog.”
He noted the SPSA is also working with non-governmental organizations to provide psycho-social supports to evacuees.
In addition to the SPSA remarks, the Saskatchewan government said in a statement it recognized “this has been an immensely challenging situation.”
“We want to reassure everyone that the Government of Saskatchewan, along with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, have heard the concerns about evacuees not receiving clear communication and difficulties accessing support,” the statement read.
“We are actively working to address these concerns.”
Premier Scott Moe is also planning on addressing the media on Wednesday morning in response to the ombudsman’s recommendations.
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