People stand at the edge of floodwater as vehicles are seen abandoned in water following a major rain event in Halifax on July 22.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press
In the hours leading up to flash floods in Nova Scotia that killed four people, the Brooklyn Volunteer Fire Department pleaded repeatedly for an emergency alert to warn people to shelter in place and stay off the roads. But it would take nearly two hours to get the message out, according to information provided by the RCMP and audio recordings of emergency radio communications.
The details emerging about the early response to flash flooding in West Hants, about an hour northwest of Halifax, follow concerns about poor cellular service in the area that caused some residents to miss emergency alerts after they were eventually issued.
It was well after midnight on July 22 when first responders saw vehicles swept away in torrential rains, washed-out bridges and inundated roads, prompting the Brooklyn Volunteer Fire Department to ask its 911 call-taking centre, provided through a partial partnership with the province’s emergency measures organization, to contact the RCMP to request an emergency alert.
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“We need an emergency alert put out for West Hants area for people to shelter in place,” said an official with the Brooklyn Volunteer Fire Department at 1:12 a.m., according to recordings archived by Broadcastify, a radio communication streaming service. “At this time, we need people to stay off the roads. We have major flooding and damage to infrastructure.”
The RCMP operations command centre supervisor contacted the province’s emergency measures organization, which is responsible for sending out alerts for natural disasters and non-criminal matters. At 1:24 a.m., RCMP called the duty officer for EMO’s provincial co-ordination centre and asked for an emergency alert to be issued for flooding, as requested by the Brooklyn Fire Department, according to a statement from the force.
By about 1:50 a.m. there was still no emergency alert and dispatch hadn’t heard back from RCMP. “I need that emergency alert put out,” Brooklyn fire told dispatch.
At 2:11 a.m., the RCMP’s risk manager was told by the province’s emergency measures organization duty officer that the alert was being worked on, according to the force.
At about 2:30 a.m. two families fleeing their home in a vehicle off Highway 14 in Brooklyn were swept away in flood waters. The bodies of six-year-olds Natalie Hazel Harnish and Colton Sisco, who were in that vehicle with their parents, were recovered days later.
Another vehicle was also swept away nearby in those early morning hours. Terri-Lynn Marie Keddy, 14, and Nick Holland, 52, also died in flood.
Just before 3 a.m., Brooklyn’s Fire Department made another desperate plea: “I need that emergency message put out by RCMP now. I need that out now. We need people to stay in their homes.”
Shortly after, the dispatcher said she just spoke with the chief of the Brooklyn Volunteer Fire Department. “The CAO of the municipality is working on the alert at this time.”
At 3:06 a.m. the province issued its first emergency alerts via cellphone for West Hants, an area with notoriously patchy and unreliable cellular service. The alert asked people to shelter in place or call 911 if they couldn’t.
Roughly half an hour later, at 3:41 a.m., the province issued a conflicting alert, ordering an evacuation.
Chris Sisco, the father of Colton, one of the two small children whose bodies were found after the flooding, previously told The Globe in an interview that he was awakened by a phone call from the boy’s mother at 2:28 a.m. on Saturday. She alerted him to the heavy rain and potential danger.
He said he didn’t know what difference it would have made if the province had sent out its first emergency alert earlier that morning.
“If my phone would have went off a half hour earlier, would we have got out? I don’t know. We might have,” he said. “It’s a what if. I guess we’ll never know.”
On July 22, recordings of the Brooklyn Fire Department and 911 Dispatch audio show the first responders repeatedly asking for RCMP emergency alert.
The Globe and Mail
The use of emergency alerts has been an issue in Nova Scotia. The RCMP were criticized for not using the National Public Alerting System – which allows authorities to issue emergency alerts via television, radio and cellphones – in April, 2020, to warn residents in Portapique, N.S., about a gunman who killed 22 people over 13 hours. In that instance, one of the problems was that RCMP didn’t know that it was within their purview to issue an emergency alert.
In this case, fire officials and dispatch didn’t appear to know Nova Scotia’s emergency management office is the lead agency for natural disaster response.
In a statement provided to The Globe, RCMP spokesman Corporal Chris Marshall said “The Nova Scotia RCMP remains committed to working with our partners, including Nova Scotia EMO, with regard to optimizing emergency alerting.”
Emergency measures organization spokesperson Heather Fairbairn said the province responded as quickly as possible once the Municipality of West Hants verified the information and submitted the message it wanted to include in the emergency alert.
“Nova Scotia has a well defined process in place around the requesting and issuing of emergency alerts and our partners received quarterly training on the protocols and requirements,” wrote Ms. Fairbairn, adding that there will be a debrief to understand the impacts and make improvements for future events.
One remaining issue is poor cellular reception in West Hants where dozens of people, according to Mayor Abraham Zebian, didn’t receive the emergency alert – a problem Premier Tim Houston promised to fix. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland demanded urgent action on the problem from telecommunications companies and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
In a statement to The Globe, CRTC spokesman Paul Clusiau said the commission is working to better understand the situation that occurred in West Hants. “We recognize the importance of Canadians receiving public alerts so that they can take appropriate action,” he wrote.
“The CRTC requires that radio and television stations, as well as wireless service providers broadcast alerts to Canadians simultaneously, to reach the largest possible audience.”
The lack of cellular coverage in the area may have also impacted first responders’ communication about one of the children who was swept away during the floods. Just after 3 a.m., it came over the Brooklyn Volunteer Fire Department radio that a phone connection was broken up in relation to a call about a child who had become separated from parents.
With a report from Molly Hayes