Cortes Island Evacuation Plan

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Cortes Island Evacuation Plan is almost finished.
“I am just begging every Cortes Islander to pick up and go through the plan before all this happens. So everybody is aware. Too many people wait until the very last minute to try and figure out how things work,” said Strathcona Regional District (SRD) Protective Services Coordinator Shaun Koopman. “Please don't wait till the last minute to educate yourself about evacuations and emergency support services and how you're going to be notified and whether or not you have insurance and, and all those important evacuation considerations.”
He scheduled four-90-minute ZOOM conferences for concerned residents:
Wednesday December 9th: 7:00-8:30pm
Friday December 11th: 9:00-10:30am
Friday December 11th: 2:00-3:30pm
Tuesday December 15th” 6:00-7:30pm

While the most likely scenarios involve only a small part of Cortes, Koopman said there are situations where a full island evacuation could be called for and it is his business to prepare for the unlikely.

The most evacuation likely scenario involves something like a wildfire. There has not been a fire larger than 10 hectares on Cortes Island in the historical record, which started in 1950. So affected residents will most likely be moved to one of the island’s five designated reception centres: Cortes Island School; Linnaea Farm Education Building;
Gorge Hall; Mansons Hall; Klahoose Administration Building
“We would let them know which one to register at depending on the time that it happens and the amount of volunteers that are available,” explained Koopman.

“We're always looking for people to volunteer with emergency support services. There's nothing better than on that worst day of your life when you've been displaced from your home, showing up and see no train professional, familiar faces from your community, being the ones to ask you, how can we help?” said Koopman.
“You can learn more about ESS by contacting me at [email protected] and as always just encourage residents to write to me with any ideas, suggestions, concerns that they have, whether it's evacuation or any type of emergency preparedness.”
Other contact information for Shaun Koopman:
email: [email protected]
Phone: 250-830-6702.

Top photo credit: David Stanley - The Cortes Island Ferry via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)