B.C. Opens Emergency and
Crisis Management Simulation
Training Centre
Last summer I was invited to join Murray Coell, Minister of Advanced Education and John Les, Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General, and the formal opening of a new state-of-the-art $3.2-million emergency simulation centre at the Justice Institute (otherwise known as “JI”) in New Westminster.

JI will use this new facility to train responders for disaster situations. Coell and Les pointed out that JI was the only post-secondary institution in the world that is set up in this manner to utilize technology acquired from Scotland Yard, in computer-driven emergency scenarios.

Think of teaching airline pilots how to fly using a computer driven simulator on land. That is how these simulation centres offer training in emergency management. What to do when the Fraser River floods, when the seismic “Big One” hits, or when huge forest fires burn up the Interior? Improvisation is not good enough. We shall be better prepared due to simulation training in advance of the event, at JI..

The simulation lab uses video clips, radio communication, and maps in a
classroom environment to practice how to respond to realistic emergency situations like riots, collapsed buildings and chemical spills. The same software system was used in the response training for the 2000 and 2004 summer Olympic Games.

The Province and JI partnered to build the 562-square-metre facility by providing $2.4
million and $850,000 respectively. JIBC has become a global leader in public safety education and training, and has grown from 2,000 students in 1978 to an annual throughput of more than 30,000 students today.

 Jack McGee, JI’s president, declared that “The investment in this facility will help ensure that emergency responders from a range of disciplines are prepared to mount multi-agency responses to critical incidents. Our vision is that this facility will be North America’s, if not the world’s, most comprehensive facility for education, training and applied research in the integrated response and management of critical incidents.”

Since 2001, JI has received over $6.4 million in capital funding for projects of this nature.
(By the way, the provincial government has since 2001 provided more than $1 billion in new funding for capital projects on various campuses across B.C., and has allocated an additional $700 million in capital funding over the next three years to support post-secondary education.)

Incidentally, as an old aircraft buff, I continue to be fascinated by the fact that President Jack McGee, a retired military officer, was one of the last Royal Navy pilots to land an aircraft on the flight deck of the Bonaventure, Canada’s first (and last) aircraft carrier. I am too discrete to ask how long ago that was! Recently I sent him a video clip of an American military aircraft landing on one of their aircraft carriers, taken from the pilot’s perspective in the cockpit. Scared the heck out of me. Things happened too fast. Jack’s response: “piece of cake!”

I trust that he plans to train up his emergency event managers to the same degree of sang froid when crisis calls.

Incidentally, if you think we shall have it easy when the “Big One” hits, with help flowing in from Eastern Canada and the USA, pick up a copy of Who Killed the Canadian Military? by J.L. Granatstein and let Chapter One scare you with what  hypothetically could happen. The message is that -- to a significant degree -- we may well be on our own.
 

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