Major Earthquake to hit Lower Mainland...

[Argyle]

This is a test...and only a test...

Are we ready for a natural disaster in our own backyard?

With everything that is going on in the world today with natural disasters happening on a more common basis, are we ready? We are located on a major fault line and they say that the big one is coming...

Are you ready?

Canada not ready to face a disaster

Little done to improve security since 9/11, MP Peter MacKay says

Brad Badelt
Vancouver Sun
Monday, September 19, 2005

Military cuts and lack of federal planning have left Canadians woefully unprepared for a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, says Conservative emergency preparedness critic Peter MacKay.

MacKay, who spoke in West Vancouver on Sunday, said the federal government has done little to improve national security and emergency preparedness since 9/11, despite several reports urging it to do so.

"I think the minister [Anne McLellan] herself has acknowledged that our [emergency response] is questionable at best," MacKay said. "We don't have a national strategy, for example, to protect infrastructure. We don't have a national coordinating body that is sufficient to deal with a disaster of the magnitude that we saw in the wake of Hurricane Katrina."

MacKay described Canada's emergency preparedness as "troubling to a shocking degree" and said more funding and resources need to be dedicated to military and emergency response.

"It comes back to political capital and whether the government is going to actually make it a priority," he said. "They do a great deal of talking, there's been many, many announcements, press releases and photo-ops but the practical implementation has been missing."

The chaos in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina has been blamed partly on the response time of the U.S. military, which took nearly four days to begin delivering food and water to storm victims.

If a similar disaster were to hit the Lower Mainland, the B.C. provincial emergency program has said it has a plan in place with the Canadian Forces to fly in troops from a base near Edmonton. There are also plans to use military helicopters and aircraft to assist with an initial damage assessment.

But MacKay said Canadians could be vulnerable because of cuts to the military, the decline in military enrolment, and the lack of equipment and training that they require.

"The military can play an enormous role when it comes to a response," he said, pointing to the assistance troops provided during the massive ice storm that hit Quebec in 1998.

"We need to do much more," MacKay said. "That means an allocation of funds, and that means dedicating more attention and more priority to giving them the tools they need."

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many Lower Mainland residents have been taking emergency preparedness into their own hands.

Andy Nieman, manager of Braidner Survival Kits in East Vancouver, said sales of emergency kits at his store have sky-rocketed over the past month.

"We haven't seen this kind of response since Y2K," Nieman said. "We've always seen little blips when there was an earthquake in the area but seeing people in the situation they were in down there [in areas hit by Hurricane Katrina] is a little more to the point. People are realizing they really need to take care of themselves."

Nieman said his biggest seller has been emergency-kit backpacks, which contain a three-day ration of food and water, along with light sticks and basic medical supplies.

"We're back-ordered now, that's how bad it is," he said. "People are buying them for an earthquake, because they know that's what is more likely to happen around here."