The Town of Black Diamond declared a state of local emergency Thursday night to prepare itself for the next steps in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a video message to the community on March 26, Mayor Ruth Goodwin said the local emergency status was declared at a special meeting Thursday at 6 p.m. to further support provincial efforts to contain the spread of the virus.
“By declaring at SOE (state of emergency), Black Diamond will be able to access additional resources needed to address a potential outbreak within the community, as well as enforcing restrictions and closures within the town,” she said, adding the Town has closed its playgrounds, fitness park, rinks, arenas and outdoor skateboard park. “On behalf of council, we would like to take this time to express our gratitude to the community in all of their efforts for practicing social distancing. You’re all doing a great job and thank you for your co-operation. We are not surprised by the generosity of our restaurants and business owners. People helping people, it’s who you are.”
Director of Emergency Manager Jamie Campbell, also Black Diamond’s fire chief, said the local emergency declaration will bring more people into the Emergency Co-ordination Centre (ECC), which was set up in the council chambers last week, to plan for the future.
“We were at a very minimal staffing level in the ECC and I got the flag so that takes me out of action so I can’t even go down there,” Campbell said, adding he’s at home sick. “We’re going to take our lead from the Province. In order to do that we need some people power. Nothing changes for the public at the moment.”
People will be in place to address liaising, financial planning, logistics, operations and public information, said Campbell.
“We’re going to now formally staff all of those positions and start to look at things like do we need to close the town office,” he said. “There’s always been names in a majority of those spots but they weren’t required just yet because we were just plodding along slowly looking at things. Then all of a sudden the numbers kept going up and that’s a pretty good indication that we need to change from as little staffing as we could to ramping it right up.”
The individuals will work together to determine what needs to be done in preparation for the coming weeks and in the event of a lockdown, said Campbell.
“What that looks like and how we’re going to manage it I don’t know,” he said. “We’re bringing more manpower in and we’re dividing up all of those responsibilities to start looking at where do we get cots, where are we going to put them, how do we feed people.”
Among the scenarios the team is preparing for is the early return of snowbirds, particularly those who don’t have homes and camp during the warmer months at the Bob Lochhead Memorial Park campground, Campbell said.
“They normally don’t come to Canada until the end of April but with what’s going on in the world and the United States they’re being told to leave or are wanting to get back to Canada,” he said. “They want to go to the campground to set up their trailer. What does that look like and how do we isolate those people for 14 days?”
Another potential scenario is an outbreak of COVID-19 in the High Country Lodge, the Town’s only assisted living seniors facility.
“If it gets into there what are we going to do?” he said. “We need to start planning for that and thinking about cots, blankets, pillows, food, toiletries. That’s why we’re doing this is because this is going to have the potential to ramp up bigger. How are we going to manage this if this thing blows up?
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