City staff plan field operations on a projected map of Medicine Hat during a flood response exercise on Wednesday, May 18. (Photo Courtesy Bob Schneider)

By Chris Brown

Training exercise prepares city staff for potential flooding

May 18, 2022 | 3:49 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – It’s almost a decade since the last major flooding event in Medicine Hat and there’s been a lot of work on mitigation projects since that time.

But the city isn’t taking anything for granted.

Manager of support services in emergency services Merrick Brown says this time of year City of Medicine Hat staff are continually monitoring mountain snowpack, soil moisture, reservoir capacity and forecasted rainfall, the primary factor in overland river flooding.

A flood response exercise took place today at the Esplanade

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“It’s a good opportunity for all of our city staff that’s involved in flood response to practice and you know just understand the coordination of working together from a field operations side to emergency social services to emergency operations centre operations,” says Brown.

The exercise included a floor projection on the main stage for field operations.

“We’re simulating actual resource deployment through our floor projection here so individuals are actually placing we’ll call it simulated resources on the ground as they would in real life on day one,” Brown explains.

An Emergency Operations Centre was part of the flood training exercise. (Photo Courtesy Bob Schneider)

About 60 people took part in today’s exercise. Brown says they are held annually even through virtual means during COVID.

Brown says the safety of the community is of the utmost importance and wants staff to be prepared for anything

“Throughout the exercise we do put injects in which is some things that challenge them a little bit,” he says. “Staff availability problems, vehicle breakdowns, road closures, or unintended road closures just to understand that things don’t always go as planned and so we practice for that worst-case scenario.”

Exercises are held annually so that staff understand the coordination needed between field operations, emergency social services and incident management.

In the event of a real-life situation the city has multiple locations such as the gas utility building at 364 Kipling St. and the fire station on Trans-Canada Way.