Calgary emergency management agency moving to create urban wildfire plan

Officials with Calgary’s Emergency Management Agency presented the agency’s annual report on Wednesday during the emergency management committee meeting.

Officials with CEMA have been busy re-evaluating and assessing what could be considered some of the biggest risks to the city.

“A lot of our risks are critical infrastructure based, they are weather based, and they are human induced,” explained Susan Henry, Chief of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency.

“What we’re doing is bringing the entire agency together to do an overreaching strategy to make sure that we understand all of the impacts… potential mitigation and if there’s other areas that we can improve as an agency.”

Part of those improvements include the creation of an urban wildfire strategy which Henry says is still in the early stages of development.

“Calgary parks is already doing some vegetative clearing,” Chief Henry said. “Calgary Fire is very well trained to deal with this, so we’re in an information gathering stage where we’ll be able to see the gaps once we’ve gathered all the information.”

Jen Beverly, an associate professor of wildland fire at the University of Alberta, says having this kind of cohesive oversight could make or break an emergency response.

“They can look at (zoning) to sequence the evacuation process to try and avoid traffic bottlenecks,” noted Beverly. “There can also be preparedness planning around cross training and inter-agency coordination.”

Members of city council who sit on the committee expressed gratitude towards CEMA for working proactively to mitigate risk.

“You have to prepare for all potentialities,” said DJ Kelly, who represents Ward 4. “Because you never know what the one is that’s going to pop up in 2026, or 2027.”

Committee voted 7-1 in favour of accepting the report from CEMA. The next regular city council meeting is scheduled for April 28.

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