Would London be prepared if a disaster struck? City staff are going to be sure that they are.
Around 50 people met at the Emergency Operations Centre in Byron to participate in a staged training exercise on Wednesday (Nov. 23). The group, which included representatives from the London Fire Department and London Police Services, and city staff, listened to Frank Lamie, deputy fire chief with the Toronto Fire Service, talk about the co-ordinated response to the fatal propane explosion in Ontario’s capital in 2008.
Moving forward from that incident, London’s division manager for Corporate Security and Emergency Management, said the Forest City used that incident to better prepare for a potential emergency.
“It’s unfortunate they (Toronto) had to go through something like that, but from our perspective, it’s taking that type of situation, learning from it and making it better — that’s what today is all about for us,” Dave O’Brien said after Lamie’s presentation.
“We’ve all been paying attention to those types of issues in our community, building our response plans and trying to ensure that if something happened in our community, we’d be in a position to respond appropriately.”
Around half of the participants in Wednesday’s presentation were city workers. O’Brien said that was done because when it comes to large-scale emergencies including tornadoes, fires or explosions, the situation is managed by more than one agency or department.
“It truly takes a co-ordinated approach of all the different agencies coming together with their various areas of expertise to manage that event,” he said. “If they weren’t all working in the same direction or they were working individually, you wouldn’t see the type of response that’s necessary to manage an event like this.”
London Fire Department chief John Kobarda agreed with O’Brien, adding a group has been formed with different partners to pre-plan a course of action if a major emergency were to arise.
“We’ve laid out that strategy,” he said. “(But) we’re not naïve enough to think that plan is going to be exact as things change.”
He added the group consists of representatives from the London police, the city, emergency medical service and various community service organizations.
Kobarda noted that people may try to compare London’s capabilities with that of Toronto, the exact response shouldn’t be expected for resource reasons.
“Each community has the same risk, but we have different levels of resources,” he said. “Just to let the group know we’re going to need more help, don’t expect the same thing to happen because we don’t have the same number of people.”
