Concerns raised over lack of rural communication during emergencies

Keremeos residents are now calling for better systems for when the power goes out during emergency situations in rural areas.

When large rocks tumbled down onto Highway 3, near Keremeos, B.C. on Sunday, power and phone service were knocked out for over 100 residences.

River Valley RV Park was put under an evacuation order, but Rhonda Wilkins, the park’s owner, says it was challenging to communicate with officials and get information during the evacuation.

“River Valley RV Park wasn’t impacted by any of slide, the slide was half a mile, a mile down the road. But we were impacted by the power, and we were impacted by not having cellphone service or any WiFi,” said Wilkins.

“What we found out this time during this evacuation was communication is really important, and I think that everybody has kind of gone to the fact that you can just use your cellphone and text and just check the website and we’ll get messages that way.”

Moving forward, Wilkins says there needs to be different systems in place for when the power goes out during situations like this.

“I wanted to thank (the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen) and they have followed up and they realize now that we need to have people come on the ground, like when something happens, to communicate with the other agencies because we were left kind of stranded with no information because we had no cell phone service, no WiFi, no nothing,” said Wilkins.

“This is not going to be the first time this is going to happen to people where they’re not going to have a phone, and people are not used to that. We really think agencies just need to start looking at that because it’s going to happen again.”

This is not a unique situation, as communication has been a challenge during other emergency situations in rural Okanagan communities.