The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Josh Bowen ready for any emergency
EDMONTON — Josh Bowen would be in his element during a zombie apocalypse.
As the manager of NAIT's new Centre for Applied Disaster and Emergency Management (CADEM) , he relishes the opportunity to strategize how to keep people safe when they're in a pinch involving the un-dead.
“People laugh at it, but it's a great scenario,” said Bowen, the calm and collected head of CADEM — which will be the most advanced centre of its kind in the country when it officially opens next month.
There's civil disruption as zombies launch their assault on society. Infrastructure destruction is widespread, with zombies sabotaging basic services such as power and transportation. A pandemic tests the medical system as the undead virus spreads through unsavoury physical contact, or through the water.
And while scenarios such as wildfires, or the ever-increasing threat of floods, are more realistic challenges for Bowen and the centre's staff of data experts, the approach to either zombies or a fiery conflagration is much the same: make a plan now, before it happens.
“We like to say an emergency manager's job is 95 per cent planning and five per cent adrenalin,” said Bowen. “What emergency management practitioners did in Fort McMurray wasn't directly firefighting. It was ensuring there were the resources on the ground, so that people who were evacuated had a place to go for food, for debit cards, for housing. It's a much broader, one-step-removed piece.”
Global warming, said Bowen, means natural disasters are becoming more frequent, and more severe. Alberta is a natural location for a national training centre, since seven of the last 10 most costly insurance disasters in Canadian history happened here, including the Slave Lake fire and three separate hailstorms in southern Alberta.
The new centre at NAIT is designed to help civil authorities from anywhere in the world develop best practices for any event that exceeds the local capacity to respond to an event (the official definition of a disaster).
Located in NAIT's recently opened Productivity and Innovation Centre, the place looks a bit like the deck of the Starship Enterprise. There are four giant iPads, each the size of a pool table, in the centre, which is supported by two separate power sources. Walls of giant screens project anything that appears on those iPads. CADEM is capable of delivering on-the-ground details virtually anywhere on the planet through a complex web of information supplied by Internet cameras, maps or drones.
NAIT students in the disaster and emergency management diploma program will have access to the centre as part of their education, and while Edmonton has its own disaster planning centre (that was in full operation during the Fort McMurray fires), CADEM could also serve as a drop-in “hot spot” for disasters both here and abroad.
While we think of a disaster centre as a hub of flashing lights and sirens, what real disasters require is data. Where is the problem, and what roads lead in and out of it? What are the physical and emotional needs of people living nearby?
“We focus heavily on the preparedness pillar of emergency management in looking at training, plan development, testing plans and doing pre-disaster coordination. So you know who you need to partner with and have met them already before a disaster happens.”
A member of the Canadian military from 2004 to 2017, Bowen (who has a master's degree in disaster and emergency management from York University) was the military liaison for the province during the Fort McMurray fire, which saw 80,000 people evacuated from northern Alberta. He has served Canadians in numerous other disaster situations, such as the Red River flood in 2011, and the High River flood in 2013.
“It's incredibly humbling to serve and protect Canadians at home when they need it most,” said Bowen.
It's easy to feel panicky listening to him talk about the inevitable drama of an evacuation (such as babies born in cars along the roadside as their parents fled the Fort McMurray fire), or what happens when a noxious plume is created by an industrial fire. But Bowen doesn't feel panic in an emergency. What he feels is humbled.
“When we were reinforcing the dike system and sandbagging homes in 2011, members of the community came to us and said, ‘We want to thank you for everything you have done for us.' And they brought us food and water as a way of saying thank you for taking care of our neighbours.
“Seeing people who have lost or potentially could lose everything come out and say thank you — it's overwhelming. But that's a recurring thing. Strangers help strangers and that's what needs to be done, and it's part of the beauty of Canada.”