MEDICINE HAT, AB — Tuesday’s windstorm led to an overwhelming number of calls to the Medicine Hat 911 call centre.
In the span of a few hours, more than 800 calls were made.
The extreme call load led to the dispatch centre calling in help from outside the city.
“Our back up centre, which is Taber, they took probably 100 calls for us in a two hour window,” said 911 superintendent Colleen Bachewich. “Their little centre, they had resources called in to help manage our emergency.”
Every firefighter in the city was called in to work. Police officers on day shift stayed on to help the night shift manage the sheer volume of calls, extra officers were also brought in.
“[We had] some small fires, a grass fire, we had traffic issues because of fallen trees, we had downed power lines,” explained Inspector Joe West. “With each one of those issues comes a number of issues that police need to deal with, like traffic control.”
The calls to 911 spiked 180 per cent.
Calls that involved any injury or concern for safety were prioritized. Fires and downed power lines were dealt with first, while calls about trees falling across roads and sidewalks took less precedence.
The wind storm also led to the city using its ‘Notify Me Now’ service for the first time in an emergency.
The city says it sent out a message at 6 a.m. to users through text or email to be cautious driving to work as there would likely be debris on the roads.
A second targeted notification was sent to residents who would be affected by a planned power outage Wednesday afternoon. The city said the outage was needed in order to restore power to Redcliff.
The city said there are still some kinks to work out with the emergency notification system as not everyone received the messages.
“The systems get a little bit plugged up,” Merrick Brown, director of emergency management explained. “That’s a continuous improvement method that we’re looking at on a continuous basis.”
Brown said over 100 new people have signed up to receive the notifications since the storm hit.
While the call volume is once again manageable, Bachewich said they are still seeing an elevated number of calls as residents deal with the aftermath of the storm.
