COCHRANE— The town’s emergency response team has been busy monitoring and adapting to the number of COVID-19 cases in the Cochrane-Springbank area as they continue to rise.
The Town of Cochrane’s Emergency Coordination Centre has been hard at work “behind the scenes,” said David Humphrey, chief of the Cochrane Fire Department, and the deputy director of the Emergency Coordination Centre.
“We continue on as we have through this whole process. We’re just behind the scenes, and it’s probably not as visible as it’s been in the past,” he said. “We’re reviewing plans and scheduling meetings as we carry on through Stage 2 [of relaunch]."
The Emergency Coordination Centre consists of members from various sections of the Town of Cochrane, including Fire Services, RCMP, social services, transportation, operational services, municipal enforcement, and outside government agencies, like Alberta Health Services.
“We really, as people—not just the ECC [Emergency Coordination Centre] and the emergency management group in the town— We as people have a responsibility to do what’s right and reasonable and to treat each other with kindness and be respectful and to do the things that are asked of us so that we can keep this disease process curved until we get to a place where we can manage it in perpetuity,” Humphrey said.
Humphrey was not specific about the actions taken in response to the recent spread of COVID-19 in the area, but did note that all of the decisions the team has made have been based on science. As of Sunday (July 26) the Cochrane-Springbank area has eight active cases of COVID-19, with 22 recovered cases and zero deaths.
“I’ve based all of our decisions, in support of mayor and council, in science, and science-based fact. We will take our lead from Alberta Health Services,” he said. “We will take information from that, we will deliberate on that information, and as always, as we did in the start of this process, we built our decisions around the information provided to us.”
He added that the decisions that the Emergency Coordination Centre makes are designed in the best interest in the community, the safety of the residents and the staff working in the community while maintaining community services.
He added that it is important to pay attention to the updates provided by Alberta's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw and the Alberta Government, from which the Cochrane Emergency Coordination Centre takes its queues.
“The biggest thing is for people to recognize that the responsibility for hand hygiene, physical distancing, or social distancing whichever the person likes to call it, in a social setting. It’s imperative that citizens understand that it’s their obligation to do that for themselves and others,” he said. “And wear a mask in situations where you can’t make that space— It’s up to us to contain this and to ensure that we don’t knowingly spread it or knowingly receive it from the people who we are out and about within our daily lives.”
