Edmonton event highlights efforts to improve emergency responses
Global News
Saturday's Get Ready in the Park event in Edmonton showed how different services and levels of government work together to respond to extreme weather events and other emergencies.
More than 60 first responders were at the Edmonton Expo Centre on Saturday for Get Ready in the Park, an event that kicked off emergency preparedness week.
The event let families interact with and learn from first responders, including water rescue, EMS and emergency support.
The onset of wildfire season in Alberta highlights the need to prepare.
“We have more and more extreme weather and extreme incidents,” said acting deputy chief Rein Tonowski of Edmonton Fire Response Service.
“We need to really be focused on what our plan is, what those risks are and being prepared for them.”
Wildfire risk certainly features in the discussion. Last year’s event was actually cancelled due to the wildfire response.
“At this time (last year), we were actually setting up the evacuation centre at this place,” Mayor Amarjeet Sohi recalled.
And it’s not just the big incidents, like the wildfires, that have first responders standing by.