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New emergency system might be coming to the County of Grande Prairie

Jan 29, 2018 | 4:34 PM

The non-profit group Mutual Aid Alberta is hoping to bring a new way of dealing with emergencies to the County of Grande Prairie.

Chair Shell Clark says the project is called the Emergency Response Portal.

“It’s a centralized database that has emergency response contact information. We collect resident information for oil and gas companies, we collect service companies who are able to respond in emergencies, equipment suppliers, volunteers and response organizations, things like that.”

He adds all of this is then fed into a computerized mapping system.

“When there’s an emergency, we’re able to go and click the spot where the emergency is, determine how big of a planning zone we have and within that planning zone, we get a list of residents that could be impacted by an emergency and we’re able to phone them or have somebody visit them to tell them, to help them evacuate or to shelter in place or things they may do to save their life if there’s that horrible emergency, right?” 

Clark says this means residents would deal with one plan, rather than multiple ones from different oil and gas companies.

“One thing we found through our research is what we call a resident fatigue. They’re tired of people coming to their door all the time, over and over, and asking for the same information. So, (with) this, one organization collects it. We are also the only organization we’re aware of that has encrypted data. When the data comes in to us, we encrypt it so that if somebody actually does break into our server farm, the information they find in there is useless to them, because it’s encrypted.”

He adds resident’s information would not be shared without their consent.

County administration will study the idea.