Employees of FortisBC were thanked publicly for taking on the work of helping out businesses affected by last Summer's wildfires
At an afternoon presentation, Dale Wheeldon, President and CEO of the B.C. Economic Development Association presented a plaque recognizing the work of the Business Recovery Hotline
to Dawn Mehrer, VP of Customer Service and Information Systems at FortisBC. The hotline was run out of the FortisBC customer support call centres in Burnaby and Prince George for an eight-week period last summer, from July 24th to September 24th. Call centre employees aided business owners in registering for assistance from government and Canadian Red Cross programs.
Employees logged a total of 493 calls in the hotline's six weeks of operation. More than 85 per cent of callers reported a loss of business or revenue because of the wildfires. FortisBC also provided billing relief for close to 12,000 natural gas and 2,400 electricity customers who were evacuated over the summer.
Wheeldon said the hotline was partly set up to gather data about the needs of business owners in order to help decision-makers plan recovery efforts.
"We wanted to make sure that we had the information necessary to be able to provide the Red Cross - and they did rely on our information in many ways - to help set the programs to be able to provide the financial supports to businesses," Wheeldon said.
Mehrer said FortisBC employees in Prince George did not require a great deal of retraining to run the hotline.
"With people's gas service, whether they have problems paying or whether they've had a life event occur, our employees deal with those things every day," Mehrer said.
"We got a lot of feedback from the customers, and from the businesses, that it was nice to be able to talk to someone. The feeling of empathy that they were getting, that [employees] understood the situation, helped them to focus on what they needed and not so much on just being upset about the situation."
For communities that did not directly face an evacuation, the wildfires still brought a significant economic toll.
Amy Reid works as an Economic Development Officer with the City of Quesnel. Although Quesnel was did not face an evacuation like other communities, such as Williams Lake, Reid said the tourism industry in the area took a hit.
"With the highway closure, it really impacted us. We had two festivals that were cancelled in Quesnel this summer, our Billy Barker Festival and Skyfest, which are our two big summer festivals. With the Highway closure, tourism ground to a halt," Reid said.
Reid said the hotline was a help for many businesses. Forty contacted the line, and many were able to access Red Cross funding after receiving follow-up calls from city and BCEDA staff.
Many of these businesses are still recovering from their losses from the Summer.
"Some of them are businesses that rely on visitors in the summer season, so it will be next year before they see that rebound," Reid said.
