Ontario Conducts Emergency Management Exercise

UNCLAS TORONTO 000020 SIPDIS SIPDIS SENSITIVE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: AMED PREL CASC PGOV CA SUBJECT: Ontario Conducts Emergency Management Exercise Sensitive but Unclassified - Protect Accordingly. ¶1. (SBU) Following up on recommendations by the UK and U.S. Consuls General in Toronto, Emergency Management Ontario (EMO) organized an emergency management exercise in Toronto on January 16. Hosted by Ontario Commissioner for Emergency Management Jay Hope, the session brought together five staff from the British, U.S., Portuguese, and South African consulates general, with 26 Canadian municipal, provincial, and federal emergency management professionals from law enforcement, fire, hospital administration, transit, community safety, the Red Cross, and Canadian Forces agencies. Discussion focused on post-emergency decision-making and communication strategies. ¶2. (SBU) The discussion was kicked off by an in-depth "procedures followed and lessons learned" review of the aftermath of the September 2, 1998 crash of New York to Geneva-bound Swiss Air flight 111 just off Nova Scotia. The investigation concluded the Swiss Air flight, which crashed while attempting an emergency landing at Halifax airport killing all 229 persons on board, was due to an electrical fire. In detailing the crash and its aftermath, Andy Latham, the RCMP officer in charge of the investigation and currently the Director of Emergency Programs at Emergency Management Nova Scotia, explained the challenges of managing the multinational response to the accident while maintaining the integrity of the investigation. He stressed the importance of: Looking after the people involved, both victims' families and responders; "Think big or go home" i.e., making decisions and following-through with huge resource commitments; including other agencies and volunteers (the recovery itself clocked 40,000 volunteer hours); establishing and maintaining strong lines of communication; and encouraging volunteers to leave their egos at the door. ¶3. (SBU) After the Swiss Air crash overview, the group conducted an emergency response scenario to a simulated head-on commuter train and passenger train collision during a winter morning's rush hour just east of Toronto, resulting in hundreds killed or injured and up to 2,000 people wandering around the accident site. The after-scenario discussion focused on the roles of emergency management (especially fire and police first response),medical needs, identifying and tracking the victims, communication to consulate representatives and the general public, handling of international visitors and the media, and the impact of language and cultural considerations. One participant emphasized the truly catastrophic nature of the fictional scenario by noting that, other than the Swiss Air 111 crash, the last time Canada experienced a tragedy of this magnitude was the Halifax explosion of 1917. ¶4. (SBU) Comment: British Consul General Nicholas Armour began the afternoon by noting that, following the August 2, 2005 Air France crash at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, he could not get an answer from any offices he called looking for information about British citizens on the flight. Following the Air France crash U.S. Consulate staff also could not obtain vital information, such as the nationalities of passengers, from provincial officials. Informal person to person contacts developed by our Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers working at Pearson Airport helped us quickly identify and locate the AmCits involved. ¶5. (SBU) Comment (continued): Given that more than 50% of the Greater Toronto Area's 5 million residents are foreign-born, that about 250,000 American citizens live in ConGen Toronto's consular district, and that many Ontario municipalities along the border already have cross-border emergency response agreements (mostly informal) with neighboring U.S. municipalities, the response to any significant emergency in southern Ontario will be international (and almost certainly involve the U.S.). The exercise did not provide certainty regarding which of Canada's federal, provincial, or municipal government agencies would be our primary points of contact for different kinds or locations of emergencies, perhaps previewing the difficulty for consular officials of finding the information nexus in the aftermath of the next emergency in Ontario. We hope that EMO will soon develop an effective standard operating procedure to ensure that provincial officials provide the information that we and other consulates will need during future emergencies involving foreign nationals in Ontario. End Comment. TUNIS