Prince George is the first community to test out a new digital system for registering evacuees.
More than 250 staff and other personnel attended a training session at the CN Centre today (June 13), which also serves as the city’s emergency reception centre.
“What we are doing is testing out Emergency Management B.C.‘s new digital registration, and referral system for evacuees,” said Adam Davy, the city’s manager of emergency programs, at the training event. “The big benefit is that now we are taking what might have been 80 minutes of staff and volunteer time down to as little as twenty minutes. “
Prince George is the first community to test out Emergency Management BC’s new digital registration. Training going on at CN Centre. #CityofPG @PGMatters pic.twitter.com/q5gVrB1HvJ
— Hanna Petersen (@hannaepeter) June 13, 2019
Over the past two summers, Prince George welcomed a total of 14,000 wildfire evacuees. Each of those evacuees registered for supports such as food and accommodation by using a paper-based system provided by the Province of B.C.
Since then, the city has been working with Emergency Management B.C. to implement a digital system that would reduce the time needed to register evacuees and decrease the number of staff and volunteers required at the Emergency Reception Centre.
“I think 2017 was a really big learning curve for the city, and 2018 we were able to put a lot of those lessons into practice and now for 2019, with the digital registration I think this is safe to say it’s a game changer,” said Davy.
Emergency Management B.C. has developed the online system and is working the City of Prince George, and three other local governments including the City of Kamloops, the Regional District of Central Okanagan, and T'Kemloops First Nation, to pilot and implement the system through the summer.
“But the city of Prince George is the first pilot community to test this project at scale,” said Davy. “So far the news has been excellent. The system has been working quite well.”
Digital registration can cut down wait times for wildfire evacuees. Volunteers here are role-playing to learn the new technology. #CityofPG @PGMatters pic.twitter.com/sr4dvfaci7
— Hanna Petersen (@hannaepeter) June 13, 2019
He says the system is very intuitive to use and most volunteers who’ve gone through the training session have been able to pick it up within the hour.
As this is a pilot project, Davy says this is really year-one of a multi-year modernization process.
“I think in the next coming year we will see some pretty good innovations coming out as well. I think the end result will be where evacuees can actually register online prior to when they leave their home.”
He says this would cut down on wait times in lines and create a better experience for evacuees. The new system can also be utilized for smaller-scale emergencies.
“There’s three levels of emergency support services,” explained Davy. “Level one is 10 or so folks, level two is 100 or so, and then level three are these major events that we have seen in the last couple of years. This system is for all three levels, so what you see behind you is what it would look at full scale.”
The city is continuing to work with the province to finalize the system.
