In the last decade, the B.C. government has churned out 180 news releases that refer to earthquakes in some fashion. Some are just peripheral mentions, such as how to donate at liquor stores to quake victims elsewhere in the world.
But many are about the government’s earthquake preparation or mitigation measures. There are dozens of announcements about seismic upgrades to schools, about Shake Out Day in October, about upgrades to alert systems and training exercises.
“We have a robust and multi-faceted emergency management system in B.C, one that is recognized globally for its efficiency and effectiveness,” then public safety minister Shirley Bond proclaimed in one release a few years ago.
The general tone of the press releases is that government is on top of the job of preparing for quakes.
But auditor general Russ Jones says that’s an entirely erroneous impression. He released an audit of Emergency Management B.C. on Tuesday and it concludes the province can’t demonstrate it’s adequately prepared for a catastrophic earthquake.
That can’t be a surprise to anyone who thinks about it for a minute. Here’s the thing — no government will ever be ready for the truly catastrophic 8.0 quake, of the kind that wreaks wholesale havoc. And it’s a bit hypocritical to rap the government for not being ready when most people — me included — are far from ready to look after themselves. (The audit cited a B.C. Automobile Association survey that found 65 per cent of people don’t even know enough to drop and cover during a quake.)
The startling thing in the audit is that the government’s “lack of preparedness has not been publicly disclosed.”
For all the news releases that get written, the audit concluded that EMBC can’t demonstrate that it is adequately prepared to manage the effects of a catastrophic earthquake. And there is no place in government where it reports publicly on preparedness.
It’s not that the agency is doing nothing. It has its hands full dealing with 6,000 routine callouts a year. But all that work leaves the preparation for catastrophe as a task that’s done “off the side of the desk,” as Jones put it. And the office is functioning with about the same budget it had eight years ago.
It’s “not adequately prepared for a catastrophic earthquake; however, this information has not been made public,” the audit said. “Individuals … do not have sufficient information to understand fully the risks they are facing or to determine the resulting level of preparedness that they must achieve to protect themselves, their families and their communities.”
It’s also surprising that anyone could be lulled by all the news releases into thinking B.C. is ready, given that this is the fourth report to conclude it’s not.
It has been 17 years since the auditor general first looked at earthquake preparedness. That produced 60 recommendations. A few years later, a standing committee examined the topic and produced another 28 recommendations. Then an internal audit in 2007 came up with another 13 recommendations.
That should be a big enough pile of ideas to put a plan together. But Jones said successive governments have spent scarce money on more pressing needs. When it comes to preparing for a catastrophic quake, all that’s left is to issue a stream of reassurances that it’s all in hand, when it isn’t.
The paradoxical conclusion is that we’d all be better off if the government just admitted it couldn’t begin to cope with the big one. That might prompt people to take some of the responsibility on themselves.
Just So You Know: The audit also sheds some retrospective light on the aborted attempt two weeks ago to give former Liberal cabinet minister John Les a $140,000 job co-ordinating quake safety.
The government obviously knew the audit was coming down. So Les’s direct, untendered appointment, later rescinded, was as much about staying ahead of the auditor general as it was about responding to the need for quake co-ordination.
His three years as minister responsible for quake readiness was cited as a plus when he was named. But given Tuesday’s findings, it looks as if he did as little as anyone in the post.
