Plan lays out response to mass fatality event
The Saskatchewan government has released a new provincial mass fatality plan that outlines what would happen in the event of another emergency situation involving multiple deaths.
The province released the plan publicly on Jan. 12. It follows one of the recommendations from a Saskatchewan Coroners Service investigation into the April 6, 2018 collision involving the Humboldt Broncos team bus, in which 16 people died and 13 were injured.
Chief Coroner Clive Weighill wrote the 14-page plan. It outlines roles and responsibilities for the coroners service, emergency services and other agencies that are involved in a response to a mass fatality incident.
Weighill said the bus crash showed that more people are needed at a mass fatality scene — the attending coroner and assisting coroner were there, trying to do all the work that has to take place at the scene and afterward. They were trying to work with the families, other service providers, set up a morgue and arrange transportation.
“It can't happen that way. You need more support,” Weighill said.
The plan doesn't specify a number of deaths that would result in an incident being classified a “mass fatality” incident, but a “general” incident is one which “exceeds normal operating capacities,” while a “catastrophic” incident is one that “triggers the activation of a provincial emergency.”
The director of Saskatoon's emergency management, Pamela Goulden-mcleod, said the mass fatality plan is intended to help municipalities as well.
Mass casualty planning has always been part of emergency response planning and this is a more coordinated approach to it for the province, she said.
In 2017, Saskatoon EMO and 19 agencies took part in a mass casualty exercise, examining the responsibilities of each agency and how they all came together. She said the organizations took what was learned from this exercise to further develop their planning.
Provincial officials wanted to ensure people know what their roles are in an incident before it happens so they can be prepared, Weighill said.
“What we were trying to do on purpose was create a plan that was very easy to follow, easy to train people on, and that would give them the first steps when they get to the scene. A lot of things that happen at an incident can be taken during the incident, can be figured out a little bit later on, so they don't need all that information in a plan,” Weighill said.
“From my experience, I've seen many plans before that are very, very deep in prescribing what has to be done in detail and it just ends up sitting on a shelf because people won't read it and won't do anything with it.”
Weighill said there should be comfort for the public that responders are thinking about what may happen and are “getting prepared to meet any challenge.”