St. Marys council approves updated emergency response plan

Last plan update was approved in 2020

By Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

During a special meeting of council Dec. 2, St. Marys council approved an updated version of the town’s emergency response plan.

The Town of St. Marys’ emergency response plan is a public document that provides guidance to town decision makers as to when an emergency is declared and by whom, how to manage the response and communicate with the public, and when to declare an emergency over. According to a report to council by director of emergency services and Fire Chief Phil West and asset management manager Jeff Wolfe, the town partnered with Perth County and its four lower-tier municipalities in 2021 to hire a consultant to review their emergency management plans.

From that review, several recommendations were made to improve compliance and consistency between neighbouring municipalities. One of the recommendations was related to updating the town’s emergency response plan so it is consistent with the requirements of the Incident Management System (IMS) and is similar to the plans of neighbouring municipalities to optimize cooperation during an emergency.

“Our document was written very much the same as our neighbours’ documents were written,” Wolfe said. “We all sort of work together to come up with a template so that when, inevitably, we’re responding to an emergency and it’s not specifically geolocated to St. Marys, people from Perth South can help us and we can help them, and when we’re going through it, it’s going to be a very similar read so we’re not trying to learn something necessarily new. We basically know where all the information is located within the document and what to expect the document to require of us when we’re helping each other.”

Though the plan includes confidential appendices that contain names and cell phone numbers of people who would be contacted in the event of an emergency, as well as other detailed response information, which are updated on a weekly or monthly basis whenever that information changes, the public portion of the town’s emergency preparedness plan hasn’t been updated since 2020.

Included in that portion of the plan, in accordance with the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, is:

- Guidance on when the town would call together its emergency control group;

- Considerations for declaring an emergency;

- Roles, responsibilities and expectations of staff and third parties in an emergency;

- Guidance on how the emergency operations centre operates during an emergency;

- Hazard identification and risk assessment of potential emergencies the town may encounter;

- A list of critical infrastructure supporting the community;

- Contact information of relevant people and organizations to be called upon in an emergency;

- Financial recovery options available through the Province of Ontario; and

- Program administration aspects related to ensuring compliance with provincial legislation.

“It’s a document that was meant to be written in a way that’s easy to understand, it’s easy to follow, it answers the questions that (we would) typically have at a high level when (we’re) trying to respond,” Wolfe said. “What it doesn’t do, though, is get into sort of the very minute details of an operational requirement during an emergency. So, it’s not going to tell community services at the (Pyramid Recreation Centre) where to set up tables; they’re going to have all that type of information separately from a document like this.

“This very much guides us when something comes up and we’re not really sure whether to consider it an emergency, and how to start our response. It’s mostly revolving around a higher-level response where it’s guiding our management of how we’re supporting emergency response.”

Keeping this emergency response plan up to date, along with public-awareness efforts and annual emergency exercises and training, is legislatively required by the province, Wolfe said.

To read St. Marys’ emergency preparedness plan in its entirety, visit www.townofstmarys.com/home-property-roads/emergency-preparedness/emergency-response-plan/.