Take a look inside St. Albert's emergency operations centre

At the nucleus of the City of St. Albert's response to the COVID-19 crisis is a group working to help residents and first responders through the pandemic, and to answer any questions people may have.

St. Albert activated its emergency operations centre (EOC) on March 13 at a Level Two, which allows the city to prioritize its resources and maximize its efforts toward enhanced situation monitoring, planning, centralized communications and resource-sharing in response to an incident. 

To enter the EOC, everyone must first sign off on an Alberta Health Services checklist sheet to ensure no one is at risk of exposure to the virus. The centre's location is kept secret to make sure staff can focus on their work without unexpected interruptions, said Marci Ng, EOC public information officer and communications advisor for the city.

Staff members wearing different coloured vests are spaced out throughout the facility, typing away on laptops. Workstations and meeting rooms are wiped down on a regular basis.

Pictures of pets decorate one of the walls of the centre, along with positive mental health posters and signage.

"There's a wide range of pets there – some like to be dressed up, some don't," Ng said with a smile.

Keeping everyone inside as safe and healthy as possible is vital to the work going on inside, said Percy Janke, EOC director of emergency management and St. Albert deputy fire chief. 

"This is an essential piece of our response to the community, so we don't want to get somebody in here who's potentially infectious," Janke said. 

How does it work?

The centre's main mission is to co-ordinate the city's response to the pandemic, bringing together an interdisciplinary team to tackle problems as they arise, get information out to the public and plan for the future. 

"We're co-ordinating the city's response so you can actually put more of a focused effort and a more meaningful and thoughtful approach to dealing with issues," Janke said.

The city has activated the EOC a few times before in response to the Wood Buffalo fires, the tragic death of Const. David Wynn, and when a methane pocket was hit during the extension of Ray Gibbon Drive past Giroux Road.

"This one is a fairly full activation. It's not a 24/7 activation, which would bump us up to another level from where we are."

At the top of the chain is the director of emergency management, Janke's role.  

Underneath him is the commanding general staff, which includes the liaison, public information officer and risk management. The chart then divides out into four different sections working in conjunction with each other, including planning, operations, logistics and finance. 

The planning department does a lot of the heavy lifting to strategize for the future, whether it's repositioning resources or creating business continuity plans, Janke said. They have direct conversations with the operations side of things, which work to put these plans into action. 

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Logistics are the purchasers of the whole operation. They're in charge of centralized ordering for anything COVID-19 related, including personal protective equipment (PPE).

Right now, Janke said the city has enough supply of PPE, and can connect to the province's purchasing streams to top off capacity when needed.

The finance team then keeps a close working relationship with this department to keep track of the dollar values and projecting future costs. The average burn rate on St. Albert's COVID-19 response is about $36,000 per day, a bulk of which Janke said is used to buy general supplies, and cover overtime costs and established contracts.

Managing stress and long work hours was difficult at first, he said, but putting in measures around mental health have helped staff manage the strain. Psychologists are available on contract for any staff needing mental health support. There's also a quiet room for workers to use if they just need to take a break from a long day. 

"One of the things Percy will do is a welcome briefing for us every morning, and part of it is really making sure that our mental wellbeing is okay, and that we focus on taking care of ourselves. That's really important," Ng said.

Stabilizing efforts

When the EOC first began operations a month ago, the amount of work required was immense under rapidly changing circumstances.

In the first week, the EOC had to relocate to a bigger location when staff realized they needed to grow their team from eight to 30 people, he said.

"We were seeing a number of 16-hour days," Janke said. "Whether it was closing the facilities down in the city and getting that information out, the province closing schools and the impacts with that, those are things that really upped the workload."

Now their response effort seems to be stabilizing, he said. An average of 23 people work inside the EOC per day now. Some are working longer hours with one week on, one week off shifts, while the rest are returning to more regular hours, Janke said. 

The EOC is frequently evaluating the need to declare a state of local emergency (SOLE) by looking at what's happening on the ground through RCMP and municipal enforcement data.

Declaring a SOLE would enable local officials to exercise emergency powers they wouldn't normally have access to, and "is not a decision to be taken lightly," Janke said. But based on the current information, he feels confident the work St. Albertans are doing to slow the spread is paying off. 

"St. Albert residents have been wonderful. In general, the residents have truly embraced what the chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw is saying in terms of providing recommendations. They have really done an exceptional job."

St. Albert has recorded 27 cases of COVID-19, with seven active cases and 20 people now recovered.