This Voyent Alert! test notification was sent to Kamloops residents in June 2022 but no such system exists in the Central Okanagan.

(LEVI LANDRY / iNFOnews.ca)

The Okanagan Similkameen has used a regional emergency alert system since 2018.

A similar system in the Thompson Nicola region quickly jumped to 20,000 subscribers from 5,000 when the White Rock Lake Wildfire raced out of control in that area in 2021.

But Loyal Wooldridge, the chair of the Regional District of Central Okanagan, never even heard about such systems until iNFOnews.ca told him about it last week.

“I’m not entirely sure what program that is,” he said. “I’m not very familiar with those individual regional districts.”

During the 2021 White Rock Lake Wildfire – which destroyed about 75 homes in the Killiney Beach/Ewings Landing area just north of this year’s McDougall Creek Wildfire – iNFOnews.ca looked at what other jurisdictions were doing to keep their residents informed during emergencies.

READ MORE: Wildfire evacuees could have had more notice if B.C. had Alberta's alert system

Alberta brought in its provincial emergency alert system in 1997.

By 2021, BC’s provincial system had only been used for tsunami warnings or RCMP amber alerts but one alert went out on Aug. 17 of this year as the McDougall Creek Wildfire forced people from their homes in and around West Kelowna.

Provincial systems, while they are intrusive and set off alarms on all affected cell phones, don’t give detailed information or reach land lines like a regional system can.

READ MORE: How were you alerted to evacuate for Central Okanagan wildfire

In 2018, the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen launched its Civic Ready system on a regional basis. That was replaced in 2022 by Voyent Alert! when Civic Ready pulled out of Canada.

Voyent Alert! is the same system used in the Thompson Nicola Regional District and some member municipalities like Kamloops and Lytton. The North Okanagan and Columbia Shuswap regional districts use a system called Alert Ready.

“What we actually, as a board, decided early on in this term as one of our number one priorities is looking at the Emergency Operations Centre as an annual operating model so systems like this could fully be considered because I know there’s a lot of evolution from a technology perspective that we haven’t had the resources to even sit down and figure out,” Wooldridge said.

“It’s always been reactionary in the Emergency Operations Centre so, I think, what it would be fair to say is, the direction to the board is to create a robust emergency management system that runs all year and, I think, looking at a technology evolution like that would definitely be considered.”

In 2021, Logan Lake showed how effective something like its Voyent Alert! system can be.

“They did some of the best work we’ve ever seen in terms of keeping the community updated with twice daily updates through the system and keeping everybody apprised of what was going on with their properties,” Voyent Alert! president and CEO Brian McKinney told iNFOnews.ca at the time. “When the emergency alert was rescinded, everybody got an information package through the system advising them what to expect, the issues to look out for on their return, key contact information. It was a really thorough and excellent job they did.”

The system comes with a nominal annual rate – Kamloops paid $14,800 this year and the Thompson Nicola Regional District $3,000 – plus a cost of seven cents per message per user.

It can be used for things like boil water advisories or notifications of other emergencies.

“If there’s a gas leak in your community, you might receive an alert that says your mom’s house is located 500 metres northwest of the gas leak and this is your preferred evacuation route,” McKinney said.

“Because we have access to a broader payload of information, you’re going to get a lot of precise maps. You’re going to get a picture that says: here’s where your house is and it’s in the middle of the evacuation alert area. You don’t have to read this 40-line document to figure out if you need to be moving or not. We’re in the position where we can provide you with exit route information so you can look at your phone and you can see the green line on the map indicating this is your evacuation route.”

During the McDougall Creek Wildfire, emergency services personnel had to knock on thousands of doors to tell people they had to leave and residents were asked to check online to find out if they were in areas under evacuation alerts.

In some cases, people got the provincial alert on their phones after they had been evacuated.

The Central Okanagan Regional District is looking at hiring a consultant to interview staff members involved with the McDougall Creek emergency but there is, at this time, no indication whether there will any opportunity for public input.

READ MORE: McDougall Creek Wildfire: Public role in postmortem not likely

The province has also set up a 14-member provincial task force on emergency preparedness but that does not include anyone from the Central Okanagan which had direct experience with 26,000 people evacuated in 48 hours by the McDougall Creek Wildfire.

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