What if? Iqaluit responders ponder their options

Firefighters from the Iqaluit Fire Department attend to a member of the Canadian Forces pretending to be wounded during a mock disaster exercise in August, 2009. Such “interoperability” exercises are now a key feature of emergency planning in the North. (FILE PHOTO)

A power outage in Iqaluit late last month left some people wondering “what if?”

What if the power outage was total? What if it lasted a week? What if it happened in February? What if it coincided with a blizzard?

The Aug. 29 power outage meant headaches for city business, but also resulted in a day off work for many government employees and a delay to the start of school for area students.

Combine that with relatively warm and sunny weather and the whole thing felt more like the weekend than a civil emergency.

But it doesn’t take much to imagine a major power failure becoming a serious public emergency.

That’s what happened in Rankin Inlet in 2008, when a string of mechanical failures at the power plant there plunged the community into darkness in the middle of February.

The result was several days of rotating power outages and plenty of frozen pipes.

The hamlet declared a state of emergency as the power plant struggled to meet a fraction of the load demand, giving it the authority to shut down businesses to conserve power.

Iqaluit and numerous other Nunavut communities face a similar threat thanks to the aging stable of power plants scattered across the territory.

Even Iqaluit’s backup generator, housed in a 65-year old building off Federal Road, dates back to 1974.

But as Chris Wilson, Iqaluit’s fire chief explains, anyone looking for a detailed plan in the event of a catastrophic power failure will be disappointed.

What the city has is an “all-hazards plan” which lays out the process for declaring a state of emergency, and meets the Government of Nunavut’s legislated requirements for municipal emergency preparedness, Wilson says.

“It’s a very basic plan, it’s not a how-to guide.”

That’s because few emergencies are “perfect disasters” that allow for textbook planning in advance, Wilson said.

The response to a massive disaster that would, say, require Iqalummiut to evacuate would have to include territorial and federal emergency officials, Wilson said, and the city cannot plan out in advance the roles of other government agencies.

But that’s why emergency officials from all three levels of government, including Wilson, got together Aug. 30 to talk about ways Iqaluit first responders can work together in an emergency.

It’s called “interoperability” in government parlance, and it’s been the central theme of every Operation Nanook since those exercises, run by the Canadian Forces, started taking place every summer in 2007.

“It’s really about how we’re going to coordinate and organize ourselves in the event of an incident,” Wilson said.

He added the city is in the process of updating its emergency plan with more details about how emergency officials are to convene during an emergency, as well as an inventory of resources the city would need if something happens.

That inventory will include emergency generators, he said.

“You don’t want to wait until the big one hits,” he said.

Despite all that planning, some Iqaluit residents aren’t taking any chances in the event the lights go out again.

On the city’s sell-swap Facebook page, one resident was organizing a bulk purchase of gas-powered home generators.