CO-ORDINATING CRISIS RESPONSE
CEMA chief committed to saving lives
Since the city ramped up its emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tom Sampson’s days start early.
Almost as soon as he’s awake, the Calgary Emergency Management Agency chief is checking the latest news about the novel coronavirus and firing off responses to questions that arrived overnight.
“And then,” he says, “I get up.” Sampson isn’t even out of bed before he jumps into the problem solving of helping lead Calgary through the unprecedented crisis, co-ordinating city agencies from the emergency operations centre each day. At this point, he’s a familiar face to Calgarians as he stands next to Mayor Naheed Nenshi to give updates on the city’s response to COVID-19 and on what people can do to keep each other safe.
Part of his job is getting the message across about the importance of the everyday action to stop the virus in its tracks: Stay two metres of distance from others in public, cover any cough or sneeze with your elbow and — above all — wash your hands.
“I don’t think my hands have ever been so clean,” Sampson quipped in a mid-march update. “I almost feel like I could do surgery at any moment. I know that sounds a bit odd, but that’s how we have to be to stop the spread of this disease.”
It’s been nearly nine weeks since Calgary declared a state of local emergency. That gives the city the power to issue orders like the ones Calgarians have seen that mandate certain businesses to close or dictate distancing practices. That power is transferred to a designated emergency officer, and in Calgary, that’s Sampson.
Nenshi said earlier this week that means Sampson has “unbridled, superhuman powers at the moment,” adding jokingly, “He normally does anyway, but they’re his powers of persuasion.”
Sampson said Nenshi was exaggerating his authority, but COVID -19 has led the city to make decisions that, in a different time, would sound unthinkable.
On March 15, libraries and recreation centres were shut down, cutting off some of the city’s most important public spaces.
On March 23, city playgrounds were closed, leaving slides and swing sets wrapped in yellow caution tape.
And that same day, team sports were banned on city fields and public areas, making baseball, basketball, soccer and other sports off-limits in groups beyond the people you live with.
These are difficult choices that have reshaped people’s everyday lives, but they’re part of the fight to flatten the COVID-19 curve, prevent illness, and ultimately stop unnecessary deaths.
“I don’t think in all my 35 years that I’ve ever had an incident where I felt so responsible to try to guide us through what we should and should not do,” Sampson says.
“I feel a real sense of personal responsibility. Not that I can go out there and stop them from getting COVID, but — if we do option A, will only so many people die? If we do option B, will so many people let down their guard and become ill?”
The pressure can be especially crushing in the face of Alberta’s death toll. Over the past two months, 125 people have died because of COVID-19, including 89 people in the Calgary area.
Sampson says it’s important for people to consider the personal reasons behind their sacrifices, and think about who they’re protecting by taking extra precautions.
“Why am I committed to battling COVID? Because I have a daughter with a disability. And if Paige gets COVID, Paige would probably have a poor outcome,” he says.
Before he joined CEMA, Sampson
spent 24 years as a paramedic, and that work is still with him. On his way home from the emergency operations centre recently, he drove by a car accident where first responders hadn’t yet arrived — so he jumped out and offered medical care.
“You can’t just drive by,” he says. “That’s your own moral standing.”
But most of the time, his commute home is a chance to debrief. He calls his sister or a member of his staff to talk through the issues of the day before he’s home with his wife and daughter.
There have still been times, he says, where he had to “tap out” and let his colleagues step up to help.
Sampson has had a psychologist talk to his whole team, and they’re also getting advice on the best way to communicate with the public during the crisis. He tries to run six or seven kilometres every day, and he spends some quiet time alone before he goes to bed every night.
It’s all part of coping through the “ultramarathon” of the pandemic, and the way it will keep changing our lives for months still to come.
Calgary’s state of local emergency won’t be over any time soon, even as Alberta took its first tentative steps toward reopening this week.
For Sampson, he’s seeing the ways the city’s preparations have paid off, even though there are so many unknowns about COVID-19 and how the pandemic will play out.
“I always felt a little guilty telling council I needed a million and a half dollars worth of pandemic plan supplies,” he says.
“I can tell you that now I feel that I probably need to double that and put it aside. I’m so glad council approved that for us.”