More than 50 people from different agencies participated in a live emergency exercise at the Smithers Regional Airport May 25.
The RCMP, BC Ambulance, Smithers and Telkwa Fire Departments, airport tenants and management, Raven Rescue, Canadian Rangers and Emergency Support Services were engaged in the exercise.
Assistant Fire Chief and Emergency Support Services Director Matt Herzog deemed the event a success and thinks the airport is well prepared for an emergency.
“All of our first responder agencies are well prepared for a mass casualty event at the airport. More training is always required. And we will continue to work with our partners to take the lessons learned from this exercise and implement them into practice and into further exercises to exercise those better practices,” he added.
“We did a smaller version of this exercise a few months ago, and a lot of lessons were learned from that exercise and at that this large one, we implemented a lot of those lessons. And this went extremely smoothly.”
The Bulkley Valley District Hospital was also involved as the actors used in the training, students from Smithers Secondary School, were transported there to be assessed and treated.
This is something done every three years and is a requirement of Transport Canada to ensure the community’s safety and preparedness in the face of unforeseen events.
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