A volunteer speaks to someone wrapped in a blanket with red crosses on it. Schedules printed on a white board advise 9 p.m. is quiet time, and 11 p.m., the lights out. Past the arena walls, where hockey tournaments or figure-skating practice may normally take place, rows of army-green cots line the dry, concrete rink floor.
This is what the Canada Games Centre would look like in case of an emergency prompting an evacuation from Yukon communities or in a part of Whitehorse.
The CGC is one of the locations across the Yukon that is earmarked as a possible emergency site by the Canadian Red Cross, which has an agreement with the Yukon government to respond to those affected by emergencies in the territory. The organization did a rehearsal of setting up a congregate shelter in the popular Whitehorse recreation centre on May 8.
The fictitious scenario that volunteers were responding to in the rehearsal was a wildfire in one of the communities, said Reid Eyre, the senior manager of emergency operations for the Canadian Red Cross’s Yukon branch.
But these fictitious scenarios can very quickly become concrete realities — and so the rehearsal allows Red Cross personnel to get practice emergency response for times when it’s necessary.
“It's that practice, that simulation, that exercise, that is going to make our service delivery even better when they actually, when the time comes to actually work with people who are (…) actively going through a trauma,” said Eyre.
“And so if we can get the logistical pieces sorted, if we can get the operational pieces sorted so that it's second hand for our volunteers, so that, you know, they don't have to think about how to do a needs assessment. They don't have to think about how to set up a cot. It's second nature to them.”
In a tour of the exercise, Eyre showed the News the areas where evacuees would be welcomed and then registered by the Red Cross.
It’s always a good idea to get registered if you have to evacuate from home, Eyre said, because even if you have a place to stay, there are other supports which you can access.
Evacuees can have needs assessments done, said Eyre. Needs can include clothes for someone who forgot to pack clothes, or medication for someone who forgot to pack medication.
Part of that assessment is whether an evacuee has some place to stay, said Eyre. He emphasizes that the congregate shelter — the cots laid out on the arena floor of the CGC — are the last resort.
“The first preference is always that people are able to go and stay with family or friends. If they're not able to do so, then, you know, we would look to commercial lodging options. But of course, once you’re in tourist season, commercial lodging becomes less available to us,” said Eyre.
There’s no sugarcoating the way the emergency shelter could become when it’s full of evacuees: “It certainly is not the Four Seasons,” said Eyre.
“It might not be comfortable, it might not be ideal, but it gets them under a roof, and hopefully, you know, it gives them a place where they can stay until they're able to go home, or until they're able to make other arrangements.”
There are arrangements made within the shelter to make people’s stay as comfortable as reasonably possible. Eyre shows a corner of the arena, which would be cordoned off, specifically for women, and another specifically for families, complete with cots that could be attached so that children can sleep in the same cot as their parents.
Then, there are the bears. Brown teddies with sweet smiles, and white T-shirts emblazoned with the symbolic red cross.
Eyre said he’s seen many evacuees find comfort in the bears in more ways than one: something to hug, or a makeshift football.
“It's that showing somebody that you care, you know, they're not just another number coming through. They're not just, like, getting registered and moved in like cattle. We actually care. We want to talk to them. We want to make sure they're as comfortable as we can make them, and I think our teddy bears are a physical manifestation of that comfort and that care.”
The Red Cross doesn’t just respond to wildfires, despite that being the scenario that personnel were practising a response to in this exercise. They respond to everything from house fires to community-wide evacuations for any reason, said Eyre.
“We are not first responders. We're second responders. So we're not rushing across town to put out a fire, or whatever the case may be,” said Eyre. “It kind of all just depends on the situation, but where the Red Cross would come in and provide those basic needs for those impacted by that emergency.”
The agreement between the Yukon government and the Red Cross allows the latter party to act as an “auxiliary support,” said Eyre, noting that the organization does have agreements with other governments across the country. The agreement essentially delegates the responsibility of providing emergency support services to the Red Cross in the case of an event, he said.
While lots of emergency planning takes place within the buildings of governments and non-government organizations like the Red Cross, Eyre said emergency preparedness needs to begin at home.
It’s a strong factor in how quickly a community can recover from an emergency, he said.
The first step is knowing the risk, and how it varies between communities and types of dwellings (an apartment building versus a house with lots of trees in the yard).
The second step is to make a plan, Eyre said.
Households should consider sitting down and figuring out emergency plans: how to contact each other should cellphone towers go down, who to stay with if an evacuation occurs, he added.
He also said northerners should consider not just a 72-hour kit, which is the national standard, but a seven-to-10 day emergency kit, due to our remote location. Some emergencies require evacuations, while others require sheltering in place, he said.
He encouraged people to also build networks with their neighbours and identify people who could help them in case of an emergency — or people who made need their help.
“Households, families, businesses really need to be doing this emergency preparedness, emergency planning,” he said.
“It really is the biggest factor in whether a, and how quickly, a community will be able to recover from an emergency, comes down to their resiliency before that emergency, and how prepared were they, yes, individually and as a community.”
Contact Talar Stockton at talar.stockton@yukon-news.com
