Yarmouth EMO office conducts hurricane training exercise on same day Kyle churns toward region

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com



A case of brilliant scheduling or putting things off until the last minute?

Actually it was neither.

If you can believe it, on the day hurricane Kyle was churning its way northward towards the Atlantic provinces, the folks at the joint emergency measures office in Yarmouth were conducting a hurricane training exercise.

The only thing is, the planning for their exercise started months ago.

So as that training exercise was unfolding on Sunday, people were monitoring Environment Canada weather reports, the hurricane watches and the tropical storm warnings that were in place for Kyle. Until the system actually arrived in the region, or brushed past it, EMO coordinator Harold Richardson said late Sunday morning that there was little else they could do.

Even so, the EMO office was going through the stages of what to do in the case of a hurricane striking Yarmouth. The scenario for their made-up storm system, Hurricane Purple, was a category two hurricane with a two-metre storm surge and high winds.

The CAOs of the Yarmouth town and municipality were involved in the training exercise, along with local ham radio operators, Emergency Health Services (EHS), South West Health and the Yarmouth hospital, the fire department, public works and the RCMP. The school board was also involved, since its buses would be used in the event of a real evacuation, as would its schools.

Throughout the daylong exercise, new scenarios were being thrown at decisions makers on an hourly basis, and quite often more frequent than that. Things like, what alternative route do you use to get people to the hospital if Vancouver Street floods over; how to get safe drinking water to people if water systems become contaminated; how to manage the flow of people to evacuation centres; what to do if those people come into harm’s way on the way to their evacuation centres?

There were fires springing up in parts of the county, many communities in the county without power and portions of Water Street underwater through the scenarios.

And on it went.

Richardson said that certainly any of the scenarios they were trained for on Sunday could be put into action should Kyle necessitate it.

A main difference between what was, or wasn't, happening with Kyle is the training exercise the EMO office was working on had their "hurricane" passing through the area in the middle of a work and school day.

Kyle strengthened to hurricane status as it churned past Cape Cod early Sunday. It was expected to make landfall in New Brunswick late Sunday night or early into Monday, although forecasters were warning throughout the weekend that southwestern Nova Scotia would start to feel it effects late Sunday. The Canadian Hurricane Centre said early Sunday that Kyle should be post tropical by then, but there is the possibility it could still be a marginal category one storm with winds gusting to 120 kilometres an hour. Hurricane watches, tropical storm warnings, wind and rain warnings were in place in many parts of southwestern Nova Scotia and for most of New Brunswick.

There were also concerns about Kyle’s arrival off Yarmouth, given that it will coincide with high tide.

Aside from coming on the day EMO planned its training exercise, Kyle’s arrival in the region is also five years to the day that Hurricane Juan tore through parts of the Maritimes. The category two hurricane made landfall between Shand Bay and Prospect in the Halifax Regional Municipality and resulted in over $200 million in damages and some fatalities.