Responding to an International Request for Assistance

1. Responding to an International Request for Assistance And You Haven't Done Your Homework

2. Disaster Management Program for Manitoba Health • MB Health formed the Disaster Management branch in 1998 with an all-hazards mandate.

3. ODM Mission Statement • To ensure the health sector is able to meet the health needs of Manitobans during and after disasters through prevention and mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery activities.

4. The Red River: A PrimerFor participant information will not be covered in the presentation • Geology • The Red River flows across the flat lakebed of the ancient glacial Lake Agassiz, an enormous glacial lake created at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation from meltwaters of the Laurentide ice sheet. As this continental glacier decayed, its meltwaters formed the lake, and over thousands of years sediments precipitated to the bottom of the lakebed. These lacustrine soils are the parent soils of today's Red River Valley. The river itself is very young; it began only after Lake Agassiz drained, about 9,500 years ago.[5] • The word "valley" is a misnomer. While the Red River drains the region, it did not create a valley wider than a few hundred feet, and the much-wider floodplain is the lakebed of the glacial lake.[5] It is remarkably flat; from its origin near Breckenridge, Minnesota to the international border near Emerson, Manitoba, its gradient is only about 1:5000, or approximately 1 foot per mile. The river, slow and small in most seasons, does not have the energy to cut a gorge. Instead it meanders across the silty bottomlands in its progress north.[5][6] In consequence, high water has nowhere to go, except to spread across the old lakebed in "overland flooding". Heavy snows or rains, on saturated or frozen soil, has caused a number of catastophic floods, which often are made worse by the fact that snowmelt starts in the warmer south, and waters flowing northward are often dammed or slowed by ice.[5][7] These periodic floods have the effect of refilling, in part, the ancient lake.[6] • Major floods in historic times include those of 1826, 1897, 1950, 1997, and 2009, and many years in between.[8] There have been many other floods in prehistoric times, of equal or greater size. These "paleofloods" are known from their effects on local landforms, and have been the subject of scholarly studies.[9] • Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_of_the_North

5. The Red River: A PrimerFor participant information will not be covered in the presentation • History • The watershed of the Red River was part of Rupert's Land, the Hudson's Bay Company concession in north central North America. The Red was a key trade route for the company, and contributed to the settlement of British North America. The stream was used by fur traders, including the Métis people, and by the settlers of the Red River Colony, the primary settlement of which eventually became Winnipeg, Manitoba. The river gave its name to the Red River Trails, nineteenth-century oxcart trails which supported this trade and these settlements, and which led to further development of the region on both sides of the international border. • Geography • The Red River forms at Wahpeton, North Dakota and Breckenridge, Minnesota, passes through Fargo, North Dakota/Moorhead, Minnesota and Grand Forks, North Dakota/East Grand Forks, Minnesota, and then continues on to the province of Manitoba in Canada. Manitoba's capital — Winnipeg — is at the Red's confluence with the Assiniboine River, at a point commonly referred to as The Forks. The Red then flows further north before draining into Lake Winnipeg which is part of the Hudson Baywatershed. • Southern Manitoba has a comparatively long frost-free season, between 120 and 140 days in the Red River Valley.[4]

8. The Spring Flood 2009 on the Red River: A PrimerFor participant information will not be covered in the presentation • Red River experienced its second highest flood in the past century (behind only the 1997 flood). • Natural spring peak discharge of the Red River at James Avenue in Winnipeg in cubic feet per second was 125,000 cfs (1997 was 163,000 cfs). • Natural spring peak stages of the Red River at James Avenue in Winnipeg in feet above datum was 33.4 feet (1997 was 34.4 feet). • Red River spread across an area of 1,680 square kilometres (650 square miles) in southern Manitoba (1997 was 2,000 square kilometres or 770 square miles). • At peak, the Red River was approximately 16 kilometres (10 miles) wide at Morris (1997 was 40 kilometres wide (25 miles) and normal is approx. 60 to 150 metres wide or 200 to 500 feet wide). • Total number of registered evacuees was approximately 2,800 (in 1997 there were between 20,000 and 30,000 evacuees).

9. The Red River • River flows northward from headwaters in the United States at Lake Traverse to its mouth in Canada at Lake Winnipeg. • Red River topography is very flat • Average is 6 inches per mile.

10. Situation- • Manitoba preparing for 2nd worst flood since 1826 • Health Sector preparing for: • Continuity of services • Response • Recovery Efforts

11. The Call For Assistance • March 26th, 19:30hrs • Request for EMS assets to assist with evacuations of long-term care and acute care facilities • “Send everything you got”

12. The Requirements • Be self sufficient • Personnel • (Deployment of approximately 96 hours) • Materials (Drugs, Supplies and Equipment) • Food, Fuel, Communications • Integrate into command system

13. What can we send? • Units • Personnel • The Border • Radio Comms • Cellular Comms • Fuel • Food • Expenses • Navigation • Meds/Supplies

14. What Can We Send? • The province wide dynamic redeployment of the ambulance fleet • Maintain benchmark response times based on past peak observed volume @ 90th percentile • 30 Units could be deployed

15. Insurance • Accident • Liability • Licensure Issues • Delegation of Function • Scope of Practice • Are our drugs legal?

16. Incident Management System • Ongoing operational cycles • Comms Protocols • Personnel Management

17. What We Learned Preparedness Required: • Decision Support Systems • Understanding of Interoperability • Authorities Understood • Legal • Operational • Financial

18. In the end • March 27th, 08:00hrs – Request Canceled • 4 Units Deployed • 26 were en route • 2 Logistics/Command Units en route

19. Responding to an International Request for Assistance And You Havn't Done Your Homework