Readers may not know that I am active as a parent in PAC and DPAC. One of my roles apart from the community school society chair of the Emergency Preparedness Committee. The committee was formed in 2023 with the following goals in its terms of reference.
- To promote greater understanding of SD71 policies and procedures surrounding natural disasters.
- To promote greater awareness of the risk of a major earthquake occurring along the BC coast
- To promote greater preparation for earthquakes and other natural disasters by surveying the level of preparation at schools within the district
- Establish standards for aid, preparation needs, before, during, post event. There should be no ambiguity about where to go or what to do.
The Turning Point
What motivates me to do this? I’ve spent half my life living abroad in Japan and have experienced countless earthquakes from small tremors to the massive quake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that occurred in the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011.
When I moved back to Canada, I felt like Rip van Winkle. I didn’t recognize the places I grew up in. One bit of reverse culture shock I felt was the disconnect between earthquakes and preparedness for them. BC doesn’t have many strong tremors, so people tend to forget we live in a region due for a very large quake.
The level of preparation seems to stop at understanding that we all should have a few days of food and water and then wait to be rescued.
The most recent tremor on February 21 that a lot of people in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island felt is a case in point. While it was a magnitude 5.1 quake, the reality is that, while a lot of people could feel it, it barely rattled windows and bookcases. Yet, it prompted a lot of breathless reporting and freaking out on social media.
Tremors that last a few seconds do not cause buildings to fall or bridges to collapse. The shaking may startle you, but that’s about it.
Sustained shaking is what causes widespread damage and structures to collapse. The Great East Japan Earthquake lasted for six minutes. To get a sense of the intensity of the shaking, watch six minutes of the documentary, Witness: disaster in Japan starting from 1:20. Why six minutes? That’s how long the ground shook on March 11, 2011.
November 2019 DPAC Meeting with Paul Berry
What set the wheels in motion for the committee was the November 4, 2019, DPAC meeting in which Paul Berry, then the school district’s person overseeing emergency preparedness, was invited to speak.
The minutes show that he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in purchasing sea can containers and filled them with enough supplies “to sustain students and staff for 72 hours.”
It was clear in the subsequent discussion from DPAC reps that the sea cans were not up to snuff. Some reps spoke of how their sea cans were moldy or had no food. Moreover, it was not clear who was responsible for the sea cans. Should PACs fund raise to put supplies in them, or should this be a school district responsibility? The consensus was that this was a school district responsibility because some PACs have more fundraising capacity than others.
I knew that Courtenay Elementary’s sea can had some supplies (I couldn’t say if the supplies were sufficient), but all it had for food at the time was a box or two granola bars that PAC purchased from Costco. It seemed to me that Mr. Berry was playing up the district’s preparedness while in reality preparation uneven. The school district was supposed to be part of the CVRD emergency exercise “Fracture on Fifth Street” in October 2020, but this was sidelined until 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When you see the resulting video, you notice which group is missing from the list of participants: SD71.
Baby Steps
This DPAC meeting led me to host two presentations on earthquake preparedness based on my experiences in Japan.
The audiences for these presentations were small. I knew I wanted to reach more people, but the pandemic ground everything to a halt.
First Meeting with the Superintendent
As we emerged from the pandemic, I was able to form the emergency preparedness committee in 2023 and met with then superintendent Tom Demeo in late April 2023.
As first meetings went, it was basic and cordial as I outlined my aims and hopes. Mr. Demeo did allude to the existence of an audit of all sea cans and the possibility of the district using Student and Family Affordability Funding to purchase food for the sea cans. But before I could pursue this any further, Mr. Demeo’s employment with the district suddenly ended in May.
Starting Over
The committee languished for the next year as the school district transitioned to a new superintendent, but it was back on track when I met with Dr. Jeremy Morrow in October 2024.
At this point, I was starting over, trying to fill in the new superintendent on where I had left off with the previous superintendent. But where to begin?
As I was going through some newspaper clipping that DPAC had, I literally found my meeting agenda in a DPAC letter to the Board of Trustees dated in 2010!!
I showed the superintendent this letter and took it from there.
I did confirm that the sea can audit existed that the data was somewhere. We also spoke about food, whereupon Dr. Morrow produced this energy bar. (The cheeky video is mine.)
It appeared that the district had been thinking about stocking some kind of food in the sea cans, but Dr. Morrow really didn’t know much.
After instilling some dread in him with my own stories of earthquakes in Japan, he agreed that the school district should be responsible for what is in the sea can, including food.
It was a productive meeting and one that I thought moved the needle in terms of responsibilities. The school district seemed to be taking responsibility for the contents of the sea cans, Dr. Morrow would look for the sea can audit data, and I would think more about food.
December rolled around and Vancouver Island experienced a bomb cyclone. It was not a particularly disastrous weather event, but it put a spotlight on communications. Both Huband Park Elementary and Miracle Beach Elementary suffered power outages that left them isolated. What was going on? It was hard to tell as communications were spotty or non-existent.
I spent part of the winter break in Japan where a tremor got me thinking about food. Japan takes its preparations seriously and they typically call for stocking weeks of food.
Weeks of food? I had a hard time imagining schools in the Comox Valley stocking thousands of granola bars. Or was that pallets of military-style rations?
Wait a minute? Just how long do we expect our kids to be stranded at school before they are picked up by a parent or caregiver? A few hours? Maybe overnight is a more realistic worst case scenario. In that case, the sea cans wouldn’t need a lot of food to begin with. In fact, food is an easily solvable problem, and maybe the more pressing issue is sorting out emergency communications.
The Second Meeting
I was able to meet with the superintendent, associate superintendent Jay Dixon, and Yinka Adewole on February 20 where Mr. Dixon produced some documents! The sea can audit was real, even if it was a few years old. But there was no reason to think that any of the equipment had run off somewhere. What was apparent is that while all schools have a stocked sea can, their contents vary.
There was some movement on food, namely some thought had been put into a budget. It seems that the district’s sea cans can be stocked with a basic food supply for $17,000/year. Some more work needs to be done on the actual food items as the suggested fruit cups and bottled water might not last long in the extreme environment of a sea can. But it’s a start!
The school district is also working on better communications. You may have seen some of the graphics in the handout below. All of the items are easily broken into smaller chunks that lend themselves to a social media campaign or even series of posters.
Better communications for schools like Miracle Beach also appear to be in the works.
Finally, we left the school district with some homework in a series of questions for them to help give parents a better understanding of how emergency preparedness is structured.
Onward!
And you’re up to date! This information will be presented at the March 3 DPAC meeting. Slowly but surely, we are moving in the right direction.
If you wish to get involved with the Emergency Preparedness Committee, reach out to me. We will meet soon to discuss next steps!
-Shawn