The Quesnel & District Chamber of Commerce hosted a well-attended event – 10 Steps to Prepare Your Business for Evacuation – and it was very interesting, says local Chamber president Julia Dillabough.
She adds there were 30 people in attendance, including representatives from the Cariboo Regional District, farmers and ranchers, different businesses within Quesnel, Councillor Ron Paull and the local Wildfire Recovery Team, which helped put on the event.
Dillabough notes the three-hour meeting could have easily gone another hour.
There were three speakers:
• Steve Richburg – a forest protection officer with the Cariboo Fire Centre
• Ron Richert – deputy chief and fire inspector/safety officer with the Quesnel Volunteer Fire Department
• Dale Wheeldon – BC Economic Development Association president and CEO.
Richburg led off with a presentation about FireSmart, which is about people clearing away trees, shrubs and other flammables away from their homes so there isn’t any fuel for wildfires.
Richert talked about his experiences during last summer’s wildfire season and 10 of his steps on properly protecting homes inside the city.
Wheeldon provided advice about preparing for evacuations.
Dillabough says it was really informative and covered a number of areas:
• protecting your information;
• making sure you have proper insurance on your businesses because we were talking about preparing your business for evacuation;
• preparing yourself for a potential insurance claim;
• is there going to be income losses? Apparently only 14 per cent of the people who called his line didn’t have loss of income coverage on their insurance;
• preparing staff for evacuation;
• making sure your utilities are shut off, except for gas;
• contact your list of suppliers;
• know your risks, operations, employees, finances, customers, vendors; and
• know your technologies (bank information).
These are components of an evacuation plan, and Dillabough says Wheeldon noted business owners need to test out their plans to ensure they are working.
“You want to create a plan and develop it within your business so you’re ready for any type of disaster,” she explains.
“Whether it be a mill fire, a wildfire, flooding or anything like that, you want to be prepared.”
The Chamber president says she thought everyone who attended embraced the program.
“Now, it’s just a matter of people being proactive. Being proactive at the who community level is what everybody took away from the meeting.
“Helping a neighbour who has overgrowth in their back yard … well their back yard is your back yard if it catches fire….”
