Nuke-alert fiasco unlikely in Canada
TORONTO — The possibility of an incoming nuclear warhead from a country such as North Korea does not appear to be a major concern for Canadian emergency management authorities, according to government information available to the public.
The weekend fiasco in Hawaii, where people spent 40 minutes expecting an incoming strike based on an erroneous alert, has highlighted a preparedness gap in Canada, where references to a nuclear attack are conspicuous by their absence.
Nor does Canada yet have the kind of system that helped quickly spread the faulty alert – attributed to someone pushing the wrong button during a test.
“A nuclear warhead or missile attack? No, we don’t have the system, so an error couldn’t occur,” said Darryl Culley, president of a company that offers emergency preparedness training to governments and organizations. “In the past two or three decades, we really haven’t seen any investment into a type of warning system for an attack.”
Canada does have systems aimed at alerting the public to impending large-scale threats – mostly a wide range of natural disasters such as fires, floods and other severe weather events. Nuclear emergencies are mostly confined to worries about radiation releases from a power plant.
Current systems rely largely on TV and radio for disseminating warnings to the public and do not yet include full-scale text messaging to cellphones, although the federal telecommunications regulator last April mandated wireless-service providers to implement such alerting by this spring.
“This decision allows alerting authorities and their partners to work toward providing Canadians with public alerts in both official languages on their mobile devices that will help them to take immediate action to protect themselves and their families,” the Public Safety Ministry says.
“As the system expands to include the participation of cellphone companies, social media websites and other internet and multimedia distributors, even more Canadians will be alerted to emergencies that could affect their safety.”
Some smartphone apps – weather apps are an example – do currently exist through which warn- ing messages can be sent. People in Ontario can also subscribe to a text-based “Red Alert” system.
Governments have also developed nuclearemergency plans, mostly devoted to outlining levels of authority and responsibility for responding to a threat but decisions and criteria regarding protective actions are normally within provincial or territorial jurisdiction.
It’s a far cry from the heights of the Cold War, when now decommissioned bunkers and air-raid sirens were common – Edmonton alone had almost 70 sirens until 1996 – and school children were routinely taught to “duck and cover” under their desks in case of an incoming missile.