Emergency Response Plan for 2010 Games Takes Massive Effort

The city of Vancouver is already working hard to plan and prepare for any emergencies that might crop up during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, including being ready for biological threats or a terrorist attack.

According to an article on the CBC website, planners are currently putting together a blueprint for emergency response, paying special attention to several areas of the city including the Olympic Athletes Village, the Convention and Exhibition Center and the two main venues: BC Place and GM Place.

“What 9/11 did, it obviously changed the world. Whether it was airplanes that brought the [Twin] Towers down or an earthquake that brought the Towers down, the consequences remained the same, and that’s [what] our role is, to manage the consequences of any type of event,” Kevin Wallinger, director of emergency management for the City of Vancouver, told a conference of emergency professionals in Vancouver last week.

Wallinger also said emergency response involves a massive logistical effort because of the number of people who will be present at various venues and events during a prolonged period of time.

John Oakley, director of the Integrated Public Safety Unit of the Provincial Emergency Program in B.C., told the CBC that emergency planning for the Olympics is a matter of ramping up existing plans to take into account the thousands more people in the city in February 2010.

“If you have to evacuate a population for whatever reason, how do we take care of the people that are evacuated whether it be out of a motel, hotel or venue site?” Oakley said “We’ll have a number of large venues operating at the same time, that’s sheer numbers, so we have to make certain we have enough resources to deal with those potential situations.”