Local members on Canada Task Force 2 bringing back invaluable experience

A trio of City of Red Deer employees are better equipped to do their jobs at home after travelling down south for a very unique opportunity.

The three currently serve as members on Canada Task Force 2 – an all-hazards response team based out of Calgary with the capacity to respond to a variety of man-made and natural disasters.  

According to Can-TF2’s website, their mandate is to respond with up to 70 specialized team members within six hours, via ground or air, and to operate 24 hours a day for up to 14 days with the specialized equipment to be fully self-sustaining. 

Dave Bain, a training officer with Red Deer Emergency Services was in the group of Red Deer-based members to join about 70 others with Can-TF2 on a recent trip to Virginia. There, members trained with Fairfax County Fire and Rescue, which also serves as Virginia Task Force One and USA-1.

“The opportunity to train with them is tremendous and to even have a peak into a little bit of the experience they’ve gathered from going to things like Haiti, 9/11, to the Nepal earthquake that our exercise was mimicking, was an incredible experience,” Bain says.

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Bain also says employer support is key to them being able to give their time and head out on a call when help is needed.

“The City of Red Deer has been phenomenal in supporting us and allowing us to leave to go to things like Virginia and giving us time off, but if we’re actually deployed on an event, we make a phone call and say we’re going and then we’re gone,” he says, adding the City is reimbursed for the cost of them having to go.

While in Virginia from October 22-26, members practised medical scenarios, building collapse situations, as well as a scenario involving a helicopter crashing through the roof of a building. Operations lasted 24 hours a day for three straight days.

Karen Mann, Emergency Management Coordinator for The City of Red Deer, also got the chance to visit Homeland Security. She says opportunities like this one and volunteering with Can-TF2 are incredibly beneficial to their work at home.

“Any training opportunity we’re getting from Canada Task Force as members coming from the City of Red Deer, we bring all that knowledge and training back,” she says. “The value that Red Deer and central Alberta derives from having people participate in this nationally-based task force is really quite amazing.”

One of several task forces across the country, Can-TF2 is funded by the City of Calgary, the Alberta Emergency Management Agency and Public Safety Canada. It also receives contributions from groups like the Stampede City Kinsmen.

With some Red Deer members included, Can-TF2 has been deployed in the past to emergencies such as the Slave Lake and Fort McMurray wildfires and the floods in Calgary and High River. The task force was also on standby during Canada’s response to the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti and the Vancouver Olympics, both in 2010.

“One of the task force’s mandates is obviously to respond when disasters happen and to help mitigate the disaster,” says Matt White, a lieutenant with Red Deer Emergency Services. “Before that, one of their mandates is to build resiliency so communities can be more self-sufficient and less reliant on outside agencies when smaller disasters happen.”

The experience of going to Virginia and from volunteering with Can-TF2, Mann concludes, is invaluable.

“We’ve all experienced some level of working in various disasters,” she says. “One thing is disasters don’t really care what you’ve been doing all day.”

Red Deer firefighters and paramedics Matt Ree and Andrew MacKay are also members of Canada Task Force 2.