By Geoff Smith

Group hopes to help local economies plan for disaster

May 11, 2016 | 4:58 PM

They’re considered the ‘second responders.’

When a disaster, either natural or man-made, strikes a community, a big part of the recovery has to involve getting business and industry back on its feet.

The Saskatchewan Economic Development Association (SEDA) has provided an online resource to help smaller cities and towns plan for the unexpected. It’s called the “Economic Disaster Recovery Toolkit.”

“We actually started talking to emergency management early in 2015 and they acknowledged that there was a gap in emergency preparedness and recovery; that the specific business and economic focus was not there,” Verona Thibault, executive director of SEDA, said. She said that when forest fires threatened communities like La Ronge later that year, it was a valuable learning experience.

SEDA’s report also touches on other disasters, specifically the Maple Creek flooding from 2010 which the resource argues took the city’s economy five years to recover.

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Thibault said the organization’s counterparts in the United States gave their blessing to use a lot of resources based on their own experience with disaster recovery from the last 10 to 15 years. The management is based on three phases: preparation, response, and recovery. The process was customized for Saskatchewan with links and resources. The organization intends to keep it up to date with a changing environment.

“Critical and essential businesses are often the first ones to come back to a community after an incident,” she said. “And their services really lay that foundation for economic recovery. They support the public sector, the essential services of gas, groceries, and construction.”

“I think what we’re seeing at least start to unfold, while we’re all watching the Fort McMurray wildfires is that when you’re displacing not just your business clients, but you’re also displacing your workforce. It can be very difficult,” Carey Baker, a SEDA board member and economic development director for the town of Unity, said.

Baker is also the town’s emergency measures organization coordinator.

He said when it comes to recovery, everything is interconnected.

“I think people, when they really start to put the pieces together of what is required in order to bring a community back to being a community, that the business component is really one of the most important to ensure that people have the amenities and the products that they require to live in a community. But also the employment,” he added.

Baker hopes to work with Unity’s chamber of commerce to promote the toolkit’s existence.

gsmith@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @smithco