City of Powell River council has endorsed the qathet regional extreme heat response plan that has been developed for response to incidents such as the 2021 heat dome that sent qathet temperatures soaring.
At the February 20 city council meeting, qathet Regional District (qRD) manager of emergency services Ryan Thoms said the regional extreme heat response plan is a collaborative effort between the regional district, city and Tla’amin Nation.
“As such, the report has already travelled through the regional emergency executive committee, the qRD board, and is being delivered to the Tla’amin executive council,” said Thoms.
He said that all will recall the 2021 heat dome, which is the backdrop to the regional interest, and the province’s, which helped fund the extreme heat response plan.
“This is a relatively new hazard that a lot of us are trying to come to terms with,” said Thoms. “It’s not something traditionally we thought of in our part of the world.
“This year-and-a-half project was largely an attempt to assess that hazard and the risks associated with it.”
In addition to the three governments, it was important to get the health authorities onboard with the project, including Vancouver Coastal Health and the First Nations Health Authority, plus Vancouver Island Health Authority for Lasqueti Island, said Thoms.
“The principal concept for us was the impacts on public health and trying to assess that risk here,” said Thoms.
He said the 2021 heat dome is attributed to have caused at least 600 deaths in British Columbia during that week-long event. The coroner identified many of the deceased as having underlying chronic health issues, and 60 per cent had visited a medical professional sometime in the month prior to their deaths, he added. Of those fatalities, 98 per cent happened indoors.
“The emphasis in this study is trying to encourage us to work within our jurisdictional boundaries and trying to identify, for ourselves, as local government, for the first nation government, for our health authority colleagues, and other important agencies, where their responsibilities and opportunities lie,” said Thoms. “There are 28 recommendations here and there are some for all the collaborating parties and some are relevant to the City of Powell River. Others aren’t and are not intended to be.
“This is our first go at understanding extreme heat events. We are hoping to give direction for the coming years through these recommendations and hopefully, direction from this council, along with the regional board and Tla’amin Nation for us to keep collaborating on considering these recommendations.”
Thoms said in the report, the topic of cooling centres is not the biggest topic. He said early on in the study, when local officials worked with the study’s consultant, one of the surprising findings was that many communities opened cooling centres and uptake tends to vary, and most commonly, it is poor. During the heat dome, a lot of people who suffered the most and who died were either unable or unwilling to go to cooling centres, he added.
“For us as local government, typically, a lot of facilities don’t have cooling and it’s not something we have traditionally looked at,” said Thoms.
A big highlight is regional collaboration on communications, said Thoms. The three governments tend to do a good job collaborating on communications, he said.
“This is a new topic for us and it was a good exploration to bring something forward,” said Thoms. “The impacts of climate change will probably bear down on us in future years and there will probably be another heat dome into the future. For the time being, we have brought these recommendations for your consideration.”
Councillor Trina Isakson asked about recommendation 16, which stated the City of Powell River should consider applying regulatory tools available to local government to affect heat mitigation measures on public and private lands, including, but not limited to BC Building Code provisions, shade trees and exterior window awnings.
“I know some municipalities have implemented bylaws related to minimum standards for rental units,” said Isakson. “For example, if a house is being rented, one of the rooms could have a temperature of a maximum of 26 degrees, so that there is one safe room. I’m wondering if that was considered within the recommendations, because there isn’t reference to something explicit about minimum standards or bylaws.”
Director of planning services Jason Gow it is not as simple as using the building bylaw to implement those requirements. He said if there was an interest on city council’s part to see this type of solution included with the recommendations in the report, it could be included. He said in that instance, staff would like time to research how other municipalities have gone about it.
Isakson said she would like to have city bylaws added as a reference to recommendation 16, so that in future, it is clear that council is open to considering that.
Councillor Cindy Elliott said the plan is a work in progress. She said the city would be hoping to look at the recommendations and see how they can be addressed in the future through the city’s work plan. She said she didn’t believe that the city needed to ask staff specifically what is being done about implementation of the plan at this time.
Isakson proposed an amendment, adding to recommendation 16 the possibility of a maximum temperature bylaw. The amendment was not seconded.
Council then unanimously carried a motion that council receive and endorse the recommendations as they apply in relation to the City of Powell River, contained within the qathet regional extreme heat response plan.
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