The city of Vancouver, as part of the recent Emergency Management Week, conducted its first earthquake simulation. VanSlam was a day-long exercise that involved 600 city employees and volunteers practicing recreation center evacuations, building and infrastructure inspections, and search and rescue operations in over 30 different sites to test the city’s departmental emergency response plans. Police, fire and rescue, the city’s engineering department and the military were involved, according to the Vancouver Courier. Reporters from the newspaper were part of a media preview of a disaster staging site of the Heavy Urban Search and Rescue task force, involving military and city fire rescue teams. Strengthening interoperability among the various organizations that are forced to work together in the wake of a disaster is a key focus of today’s exercise, Capt. Jonathan Gormick, a spokesperson for Vancouver Fire Rescue, told the Vancouver Courier.
“Emergency preparedness is everyone’s responsibility. While VanSlam is a practice exercise, there is a one in four chance that a major earthquake will hit British Columbia in the next 50 years, and how prepared you are will make a significant difference to your chance of survival”, said Darrell Reid, chief of Vancouver Fire Rescue, said in a release.
The exercise was in conjunction with a City and Neighbor Lab series of neighborhood residence walks helping people find out about how an earthquake would impact their areas and what they can plan to do.
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