President of Sask. Public Safety Agency talks fires and flooding on The Evan Bray Show

Summers in Saskatchewan are unpredictable and disasters can take many forms.

While previous years were marked by numerous large wildfires, that’s less of a concern this season, as the large amount of rainfall so far this spring and summer has helped keep them in check. But with that rain comes the risk of flooding in the province.

Marlo Pritchard, president of the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, joined The Evan Bray Show on Friday to discuss the challenges Saskatchewan residents are facing this summer.

Read more:

• Highway repairs, flood assessments as emergencies continue in 12 communities
• ‘Yellowing and drowned out crops’ follow heavy rainfall in Saskatchewan: Crop report
• Wildfire season so far considered manageable across Canada, officials say

Listen to the full interview, or read the transcript below:

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: I feel like half the time we were chatting last year, you were in the north. You were all over this province because the wildfires were, of course. They were something to be dealt with.

MARLO PRITCHARD: Yeah, last year we were facing an unprecedented wildfire, natural disaster, that that had not been seen in this province for decades, and this year we’re we’re still seeing wildfires, but we’re also seeing significant flooding, especially in the east central, as well as tornadoes. It’s been a very challenging year.

Let’s talk about wildfires first, because I feel like even I haven’t given it a lot of airtime. Not to say that it’s not important, but the numbers have been lower. Where are we at with wildfires right now?

PRITCHARD: As of yesterday, we have 72 active wildfires. We have only had about 233 to date, which is down from the five-year average. We have had a number of communities that have been threatened, and we’ve been successful in protecting those communities. Evacuations are a lot less. Last year we saw a vast number of communities having to evacuate either due to the threat of the fire or smoke. So it’s been a different year, but we still are seeing lots of starts this year, more so from lightning than human causes. And of course the locations are different. It’s farther north and not as close to communities and built-up areas.

I remember last year, Marlo, you were bringing in some new equipment, new planes, those types of things. Are they up and running for this year? Are we are at full capacity?

PRITCHARD: We have the Q400 in. We’re getting another one here at the end of August. It has been definitely an addition to the fleet in regard to adding retardant capacity. And as we get rid of some of the older legacy planes that are near end of life, that will become one of our staples. So we continue to have planes that that go down for maintenance, but we we have also brought in planes from other provinces to make sure that we have that air capacity when we have a mission request.

Obviously, we we’ve talked on the show about both the auditor’s report that came out from last year and the MNP independent review. There were a number of gaps that were that were identified. But there was this notion of do you staff for the worst-possible-case scenario, or do you sign reciprocal agreements that allow you to navigate those years where maybe the problem is better? Where do you think we’re at on that balance?

PRITCHARD: We have a great system of mutual support across Canada, across North America. And, in all fairness, an international level, too. Not saying that we can’t get better, do more analysis on how we activate that, but the system works. When we need resources, we can get them, whether they’re planes, boots on the ground, pipe or pumps, hoses, whatever that is, we have that access. Do we have the right number? That’s part of the MNP review. We’re doing an analysis to figure out what that adequate number is for this province to have. My personal opinion is you can never staff up to the worst-case scenario. It’s not sustainable. What you definitely need to have is strong mutual aid and the ability to activate that in a very timely manner.

If we look at the MNP report, they had a number of recommendations. I had Minister Michael Weger on the show right after the report came out. He talked about the commitment by the province to meet those recommendations. I talked to you enough last year, Marlo, during the wildfire situation to know these can’t be a surprise to you. A lot of these gaps, or whatever you want to call them, pinch points, were things that you were living regularly. So do you feel like these are easy fixes? Or does does the reporting that has come out provide you with a blueprint better situated to handle some of these problems and correct them?

PRITCHARD: What I would say is, first of all, thank MNP and the provincial auditor for doing analysis and doing the research and giving us basically a road map for success. We talked last year about gaps that I was seeing, that continuous improvement that we had been working on. A number of those recommendations we were already actively working on. So it’s now “How do we expedite it and even move it faster?” We have set up a future preparedness unit to co-ordinate and implement some of those recommendations that Minister Weger has talked about. But we didn’t wait for the MNP report. We do our own after-action reviews, and so we did a lot of work, especially in the off-season, around evacuation support and how can we streamline that process and get those supports for those unfortunate individuals that have to evacuate the community. So our processes are definitely stronger. I’m going to guess that we would still have challenges if we saw like 20,000 people leave in a very short period of time, but our processes are much stronger. And we also have worked a lot more on communication. You would have seen our social media presence expanding substantively.

I wanted to talk about communication. I feel like that is one of the big challenges. Any time you’ve got a situation like this, communication is not a one and done, and it’s not one format. You can’t come on through the radio, you can’t send something out on Facebook. It’s literally all hands on deck. But is there a way that you think you can tailor communication that, in the event of an emergency, no matter what size, that we can do a better job of that round-the-clock communication?

PRITCHARD: That’s what we’re striving for, is to do better and continuously do better. From my experience of decades around emergency management and policing, the first thing that usually falls apart is communication, or the first thing that gets challenged after an event is that the communication could have been better. So we will continue to work on that. Right now, it’s social media, but we also are on the radio. We’re working northern radio, we’re into communities, we have emergency service officers that, as we speak, are connecting with communities that are facing flooding. They do the same thing during a forest fire, wildfire, and so there is a multi-prong approach to communication, and we’re going to continue to strengthen that because it’s really around making sure that the communities that are impacted and those living in those communities know what’s happening and where to go get help.

We’ve had Carl Neggers on the show a number of times, Forestry Saskatchewan’s CEO. He is really pushing the province to try and include the protection of the product of the timber of the forest as part of the priorities. Clearly your priorities are preservation of life and then property, I’m assuming. But do you see value in adding that? Because his point is, if you add the product, if you add the forest in there, then automatically those other things will be protected as well.

PRITCHARD: It’s already part of our mandate, actually But we do set priorities. Life, of course, first. Communities, critical infrastructure. But if you continue down, environment is on that list. We do try to contain wildfires in the forest area. It’s part of our review, of course: how do we enhance that? But we will always move resources to protect people and property first.

Can we talk FireSmart for a second? Lawton Bay, I think we learned some stuff about that community. Last year, you gave credit to the volunteers, the people, whether they were in the community or volunteers that came from other communities to help out. But FireSmart is something that they really hold up as helpful for them. The province agrees so much that they’ve incentivized with some money for other communities to take. I know you’re working on the program. Has there been any uptake on that yet?

PRITCHARD: We have had some expressions of interest on how to get that. We are working on developing that program and to incentivize using FireSmart principles and to build community resilience. It’s early days, but I’m really hopeful that many communities will capitalize on that, because it really builds a long-term resilience for that community, the ability to protect their community. But it goes hand in hand with what we work with in communities now around the emergency planning. Be prepared. This is the next step of being prepared.

Let’s talk about flooding in the last few minutes that we have. Can you compare this year’s situation to the past? How different is this year, and what is the role the SPSA plays?

PRITCHARD: SPSA is an all-hazards support agency. I’ll leave it at very high level, but we do supply sandbaggers, sandbags, pumps, hoses, resources, incident commanders. I mentioned earlier about our emergency service officers that go into communities, as well as our PDAP program. So when when communities are moving into recovery, we are that one-stop shop that we can help get people to start recovery.

Remind us what PDAP stands for?

PRITCHARD: Provincial Disaster Assistance Program.

It’s communities’ ability to apply for that program and use it to help them with the effects of whatever they’ve dealt with?

PRITCHARD: Yes, it gets them some financial support to recover. We know that a lot of our ministers, MLAs, myself included, have gone to some of these areas, and right now a number of these communities are moving from the emergency stage into the recovery stage. And so that was the where PDAP and our ESOs and our recovery task team will be very beneficial. We have community information sessions planned. We’ve had a couple already this this week, and we’ll have a couple more next week, and we will continue to go into those areas.

We talk about this during wildfires, and a lot of people, after the wildfires were over, asked the question: “What can be done to prevent this?” When it comes to flooding, I mean, Mother Nature is Mother Nature. What what can be done to try and help communities? Many of them have been overrun with water here in the last month or two.

PRITCHARD: It is a natural disaster, and but you can help mitigate the damage. You’re not going to stop the flooding, but building bigger highways and culverts, so water can run faster through, get cleared out faster, those are areas that are outside of SPSA, but there are aspects that we can probably strengthen our communities. But that’s part of that resilience, part of that planning, looking forward. We know that natural disasters are going to happen, but it’s a question of how do we protect our critical infrastructure, communities and, most importantly, our people and families?

We’re out of time, but do you get involved in tornado incidents as well?

PRITCHARD: We have, especially with our disaster assistance program. As long as the local authority designates that community, they can get some financial assistance in rebuilding or recovering from whatever disaster that is. So really, whether it’s natural or human-caused disasters, we’re there to help and help assist and co-ordinate the either the response or the recovery.

I know the SPSA, especially during some of these high-profile incidents, does regular updates to the media, but I appreciate you giving us, personally, some time to come in here this morning and have a chat, Marlo. Thanks so much.

PRITCHARD: Thanks, Evan. Love to be here.