Cochrane officials will be better prepared to handle large-scale emergencies when a new portable incident trailer is completed later this year.
“It gives us the opportunity to go out to any event ... and be able to operate from that space,” Cochrane Fire Services Chief David Humphrey said this week. “For us, for a (town) of coming up on 27,000 people, it was a needed resource – and now we will have it.”
The donation of $16,000 for a trailer and shell was initiated by the Cochrane Pipeline Operators Committee – a 30-plus-year-old working group that includes members of the oil and gas industry like Shell Canada’s Jumping Pound Complex, Direct Energy’s WildCat Hills plant and TransCanada Pipelines, along with area fire departments, the Town of Cochrane and Alberta Municipal Affairs.
The partners meet four times a year to discuss public awareness and preventative information, as well as agree to work as a team if an accident, disaster or emergency was ever to take place in the region.
“If there ever is an incident in the corridor … we will work together in the spirit of unified command to deal with the problem.”
Traditionally in Cochrane, Humphrey said managing a larger-scale emergency was a challenge without a dedicated hub.
“Right now, you run out of the cab of the truck, you dart back and forth between vehicles. It’s not really efficient,” he said, adding the trailer will give each partner a place to communicate with the public, off-site operations and each other.
“(This trailer) gives the officers of the fire department a place to command or lead the incident from,” he said. “It gives us a workspace … we can take our workspace with us.”
The trailer will arrive this week, and then be sent in October to be outfitted with electronics, radio- and web-based communications systems and more.
Humphrey said providing funds for an incident trailer was something the Cochrane pipeline working group wanted to do as an offer of “good will and intent” toward the town.
“It’s a show of community support,” he said. “They’re community partners in the broadest sense.”
