North Shore residents and homes may be a little safer from disaster following Operation Dry Lightning II.
The all-day exercise took place in the Grousewoods neighbourhood Thursday. Led by the North Shore Emergency Management Office, the exercise brought together a number of agencies including North Shore Rescue, Metro Vancouver, the B.C. forest ministry, B.C. Ambulance Service, Grouse Mountain and all three North Shore fire departments, to test how co-ordinated their response would be, should the mountainside burn.
The exercise was deemed a success, according to Dorit Mason, director of the emergency management office.
“In most emergencies, one of the biggest failures is communications,” she said. “We will continue to practice that but during this event, it showed we are doing a good job with our communications.”
And while the first responders are doing their work in a crisis, Mason said residents need to be prepared do to theirs.
“If we tell people to evacuate, we’ve really considered why we are doing it and it is for life safety purposes and so people should take those instructions seriously and evacuate,” she said. “That’s why it’s important for them to be prepared, so they have supplies they can grab and go.”
