Alert delay in Nova Scotia flood highlights benefits of municipal warning systems

Nova Scotia municipalities that control their own emergency alerts say that authority is vital, after a new report on last year's fatal flooding in West Hants showed a major delay in warning the public.

The three municipalities of Yarmouth County have been using the Alertable app since 2021 to inform people about transit delays or public meetings as well as emergencies like floods and fires.

It can send alerts in over a dozen ways, including notifications within the app, landlines, email, text message, and social media.

"Municipalities need to have something for their people. You have to get word out. That's tremendously important," said Mayor Pam Mood of Yarmouth.

"We're right here on the ground, we know what's going on. We know it quickly."

Four people, including two children, a teenager and an adult, died in flash flooding last July that hit the municipality of West Hants and caused major damage.

According to a new after-action report, the deputy chief of the Brooklyn fire department radioed the local 911 dispatch to get RCMP to warn residents of the growing danger through the Alert Ready system, and the fire chief texted the West Hants emergency management co-ordinator to request help with an alert.

But it took nearly two hours before the alert was sent to some wireless devices, as well as to radio and TV stations in the area.

The report said a lack of internet or cellular network connectivity in the area was partly to blame for the delay, and that not all cellphones were equipped to receive messages through the national Alert Ready system.

In Nova Scotia, Alert Ready messages can only be sent by the provincial emergency management office, RCMP or Halifax Regional Police.

The municipalities of Middleton, Annapolis County and Annapolis Royal also just launched the Alertable app for their own joint regional emergency management team.

Annapolis County Warden Alex Morrison said the importance of fast public communication should be clear to Nova Scotians in the wake of last year's floods as well as the mass shooting in April 2020 where there was also a delay in warning the public.

In an event that warrants an alert, "people ought to start working right away and let the situation evolve, rather than standing and waiting for someone else to tell you what to do or to give you permission to do it," he said.

Morrison said it's important to think about how to reach as many citizens as possible in a variety of ways. That can include Alertable, vulnerable person registries, or other options.

"One system is not going to be effective for everybody, so we need to have as many systems as we can," Morrison said.

Halifax has a similar system called hfxALERT that has been mainly used for parking ban notifications, but the municipality is exploring wider uses. Last month, it alerted residents of a fire on Robie Street and advised people to close their windows to keep safe from smoke.

West Hants Mayor Abraham Zebian said Wednesday that council only got the after-action report this week, and will need some time to look at what went well and what didn't.

Zebian said he's "most certain that council will be looking for improvements" when it comes to issuing alerts.

The municipality does have a system to notify residents through texts, but it's currently used for recreation notifications.