Emergency alert system failed region
There was nothing any human could have done to stop the wild thunderstorms that tore through Waterloo Region and other parts of the country like a runaway freight train last Saturday. There was nothing anyone could have done to slow its 130 km/h-plus winds or prevent it from toppling trees and power lines, in the process crushing cars and flattening homes across southern Ontario and into Quebec. But if there was nothing anyone could have done to prevent this full-blown emergency from happening, at the very least the Canadian government’s emergency alert system should have been properly functioning. It should have been able to warn far more people about what was barrelling their way.
The incontrovertible fact is that was not the case. Canada’s minister of emergency preparedness, Bill Blair, admitted as much Friday when asked if the early warning system had worked as well as it could have before the storm hit. “The very simple and straightforward answer is no,” he said. “I think there needs to be improvements.”
This newspaper agrees, with the slight difference that we say there must be improvements. Look what happened here, in a community of 630,000 people, many of whom were in the direct path of the storm. The Alert Ready system, developed by Environment and Climate Change Canada in 2021, successfully sent a specific storm warning to the smartphones of people in many parts of this province and Quebec. But most people in Waterloo Region never received the warning that might have been a gamechanger. If they had been notified, they might have had more time, even if it was seconds, to take the steps necessary to protect themselves. They might have had more time to move or secure objects outside so those objects wouldn’t be turned into projectiles that damaged property. They might have had more time to find the kind of shelter that would have provided physical safety and peace of mind.
But that warning never came. We do know an emergency alert was widely sent out to smartphones after winds topping 130 km/h were recorded sometime around noon at the Region of Waterloo International Airport just east of Kitchener. Why didn’t the alert get through to people in this region and other areas, such as Peterborough and the Kawarthas? And why wasn’t it sent out earlier? The storm started around London and caused extensive damage there before racing east — and into Waterloo Region. Why didn’t a London official call for an emergency alert when it was clear this was a monster of a storm? Perhaps it would have made no material difference for people in this region. It sure would have been preferable if they’d had a heads-up.
Don’t forget the young woman who died at the Grand River Conservation Authority’s Pinehurst Lake park, southwest of Cambridge, after winds dropped a tree on the trailer in which she was staying. Ten other people in Ontario and Quebec were killed by the storm. We do not cite this statistic to point a finger of blame. We mention it to show how deadly such a unique weather pattern — it’s called a derecho — can be; and to reiterate the urgent need for a better early warning system.
Whether or not you accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are changing the world’s climate, storms like this one are increasingly common. A derecho is a fast-moving windstorm that travels in a straight line with a group of severe thunderstorms. Its winds can reach hurricane force and spawn full-blown tornadoes, which were reported to have touched down in Ontario last Saturday. While common in the southern United States, derechos have been rare in Ontario. At least until now.
The federal government needs to determine exactly what went wrong with its Alert Ready system last week and learn from those mistakes. There’s some hope this will happen after Blair agreed the early warning system was “inconsistently utilized” in the storm. More specifically, he said the alerts need to be sent out sooner, should offer more and better information about what recipients should do and be more consistent in terms of who gets the warnings. If all that happens, he said the warning system for natural disasters can reduce casualties and damage by 30 per cent. We couldn’t agree more. But we can’t deliver the necessary fixes. Blair can.