Helping communities in need during the recent cold snap

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - At their January 12th meeting, the SRD Board had some good reports about the way individuals and corporations helped out during the recent cold snap.

Chair Brad Unger brought the topic up during his update:

“The weather throughout our Regional District just last couple of weeks, snow, rain, freezing rain, more snow, power outages everywhere within the Regional District, but nowhere near as it was in Tahsis and Zeballos. No power there for several days; well closures etc. I want to say hats off to Mayor and Director, Martin Davis [of Tahsis], Mayor/Director, Julie Colburn [of Zeballos]. Great job with your communities.”

During the emergency, the SRD activated warming centres in Tahsis and Zeballos and worked closely with BC Ambulance Services ensuring continuity of ambulance services and provision of essential medications.

Thus Unger added, “the other one I want to reach out to is our protective services coordinator, Shaun Koopman, outstanding job, Shaun.”

Regional Director Jim Abrams, from Quadra Island praised, “all of the communities and all of the first nations communities that work together out there to try and keep everybody warm and fed and dry and whatever else.”

“But I also think that we should give a special shout out to BC hydro for the incredible work that they had to do in the most unbelievable weather that they probably experienced, maybe in their career, and they got it done. I think, we so often forget about the fact that the service providers are actually out there all night in the dark, busting their butts and the cold trying to keep us in survival mode. So I just like to thank BC Hydro, publicly, and hopefully that will get off to them. Maybe a letter from the chair on behalf of the board to thank BC Hydro for what they did on this rebuild. Because basically it wasn't a repair, It was a rebuild of the transmission lines into those communities and they really do deserve some accolades.”

Mayor Martin Davis of Tahsis said, “I'd also like to echo those comments to thank BC Hydro and Sean Koopman did an amazing job. My community pulled together and I know there was a lot of exhaustion at the end because we went pretty much full week without power. We saw help from many places. I know Greg Seafood brought in 1500 litres of diesel fuel. So we'd like to thank them for that. Western Forest Products actually brought in several truckloads of firewood yesterday because a lot of people were running low on firewood because it's been such a cold winter there. It was great to see the community pull together. I'd like to thank our paramedics and our staff and public works for keeping things running because they literally had to use generators to run the pumping stations for sewage, those sorts of things. Everybody's exhausted at the end and I hope that's the end of it.”