evacuee registration

By Cheryl Jahn

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PRINCE GEORGE – Since the wildfires of the past two years, the City has been working with a number of different organizations to prepare for what could be another active fire season.

In 2017, Prince George hosted 10,000 evacuees and another three thousand the following year. Each one of those individuals had to be registered by hand and on multiple occasions. It meant the paperwork was overwhelming.

“To put it into perspective, it took about 80 minutes to register one evacuee last year,” says Adam Davey, the Manager of Emergency Services, who says each evacuee required two volunteers to do the work.

But since then, Prince George, along wtih Kamloops and Kelowna have entered into a pilot program that will see that registration done digitally. It also required a lot of volunteers and City staff.

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Davey says in 2017, 500 City staff and two thousand volunteers helped to work the evacuees. The following year, 400 staff and 300 volunteers did the work. This year, the City is taking a different tack.

“Essentially we did a posting for casuals that will be ESS trained,” explains Brad Beckett, Director for Emergency Support Services. “So they’ll know how to do the paperwork, registration referrals and have a better understand of how to meet and greet people as they come into the reception Centre and how to process their basic paperwork.”

He says, ideally, 40 casual workers would help tremendously to lighten the load, so that City staff can carry on with the day-to-day operations.