The Chinook Emergency Response (CERS) has been hard at work since their creation in 2018. A recent meeting at Grassy Plains School yielded fruitful discussions between members.
And some of the projects should be wrapping up soon.
“One of the big things I’ve seen since the end of wildfire season 2018… most of us, we just kind of, not forgot but the pain of it has faded a bit. And so we want to work on reminding everybody that these are real threats, and we’re not out of the woods with it,” said Risè Johansen, Chairperson for the CERS board.
“It’s a matter of keeping it at the forefront of everyone’s minds, that these events will happen again. And we just need to keep ourselves prepared, even minimally,” she said, sharing why CERS stays motivated to meet and carry out their work.
Some of the projects discussed at the March 5th meeting were the cell phone service area signs being put up along main routes on the Southside, the ramping up of the CERS website by adding new training and information materials, and the continued development of their preparedness plan.
The cell phone service area signs project has been in the works since last September (LD News reported on the project then), and Johansen and the team hope it will be completed within the next 60 days. Lakes District Maintenance is the other organization working with them on this, putting the signs up.
The point is to identify areas where cell phones are working, and where they are not, to help people plan better when travelling in the area. Last year, during wildfire season, even police and emergency service workers were sometimes lost without cell service in those regions. CERS doesn’t want that to happen again this year, said Johansen.
There will be hard copy maps available on the ferry across Francois Lake, and eventually a digital downloadable one, as well, she said.
“The other thing that we discussed is, we sent out what we’re calling a survey. It’s basically trying to get an inventory of where people are. Do they have plans in place? Have they Firesmarted their homes and ranches? Do they plan on staying? It’s a huge oversight of what the entire community has as a whole,” she said.
Firesmart is a community outreach program that guides people on how to make sure their homes are ready for a fire. It’s available online, as well as through CERS.
The survey went out in February, according to the CERS webpage (www.chinook-ers.ca) to every mailbox in the Bulkley Nechako Regional District area E. The end goal is to understand where people are, what they’re willing to do, what still needs to be done to keep people safe, and to establish a preparedness plan that will last years, if not decades, said Johansen.
Johansen adds that all severe weather is part of the CERS mandate, not just wildfire, though that’s a major concern.
And going forward they’ve also decided to have private CERS board member meetings, as well as the public ones that have been the norm until now.
“It allows us to focus on real actionable items at those board meetings and then being productive, and then we can answer questions from the broader general public at the public meetings. So we’ll just alternative those now. But we’ll still meet every month,” said Johansen.
