REGINA — Citing a litany of calls to her office about the situation, provincial ombudsman Sharon Pratchler is calling for immediate action to address the province’s wildfire evacuation response.
Pratchler told reporters she has received complaints from people not receiving services, including pages of names of people from a local municipality who had been waiting for days. She says northern residents are not feeling heard.
“From what we hear, from their perspective, as people who have been displaced from their home communities, some having lost everything but the clothes on their backs, they are seeking information and resources. Based on what we are hearing and sitting with evacuees who have been displaced, we believe that people would be better able to manage the situation when they understand that there is a plan in place and what that plan is and how it affects them."
The message Pratchler said she is hearing is “government, your processes to provide services to those people who have been displaced from their homes in northern Saskatchewan are not working for many of them. Giving a response to an inquiry from a displaced person, that the response is usually provided in 24 hours, when the person is driving in his truck around Saskatchewan and doesn't know where he's going to sleep at night, is not a sufficient response. A response that they will get back to you in four days is not a trauma-informed response."
She said information “has been inconsistent or hard to get. I've worked two nights with my people on our 24-7 line to try to get a home and food for a person who is displaced, who is an employee of the Government of Saskatchewan. It took two days to get him into a house. Some evacuees have been turned away from resources because they are residents from another province. There can be no provincial boundaries during a crisis like an evacuation caused by wildfire. Some people are being told that if they are from Saskatchewan but land in Manitoba as a result of an evacuation, that they have to return to Saskatchewan to access resources.”
Regarding the response, Pratchler said her office will be “conducting a systemic investigation in terms of the response to the forest fires and the evacuation and services provided.”
The scope is not yet determined, but she adds that is not what the focus needs to be right now. Pratchler said the focus right now is on immediate needs.
“The immediate needs are basic. They are to find everyone who has been displaced from their home a place to sleep and access to food. These are basic human needs and the province is responsible for providing for them without any further delay. I have a complaint in my office about people sleeping in their cars, people who are hungry, people who are getting sick. They need an immediate response.”
What Pratchler called on the government of Saskatchewan to do is the following:
- Immediately put in place 24-hour services to clear off the long list of people needing a safe place to sleep and access to food.
- Ensure that the 24-hour service is properly staffed so that there are no errors due to exhaustion.
- Provide information to evacuees that is accessible and understandable for people who have suffered trauma of evacuation from their homes in the middle of the night. “The messages have to be simple. It can't be a flood of emails and press releases. It has to be a simple message because they can't even process the information unless it is. Number four, provide a response on the 855 number that is an immediate response. To be effective in a crisis, responses must be immediate at the very least at this point in time.”
- Pratchler is also calling for discretion in terms of the payments that are being made. “I've been hearing complaints that there's inconsistencies so that people who have been evacuated on one day are only receiving payments on the day that they apply. So it's not retroactive to the day they've been evacuated.”
- Provide critical incident debriefings within two hours of total losses of communities like Denare Beach for both the firefighters and the fire crews and to the residents who lost everything.
- Have one list of all evacuation sites with information on which communities have been sent to which location, so “loved ones and family members know where their family members are. We have a partial list in terms of the hotels, but we've asked for that information.
- Provide access to phone services for evacuation sites so people can connect with their loved ones. One evacuee yesterday used our cell phone to connect with a family member. There should be seamless services and equitable services. It shouldn't matter where you've been evacuated to in terms of the services you're receiving.
- Have one database of all evacuees, whether or not they are at an SPSA or Red Cross evacuation site. “I'm hearing directly from people that they don't know where their families are. They don't know where they've been evacuated to, and nobody can tell them. “
- Ensure that there is a space for the doctors who have been evacuated from La Ronge to see their patients, and also ensure those doctors have the administrative support that they need to be able to function. “People who have medical appointments that can't be missed or rescheduled are wondering how they're supposed to get to them from the community they've been evacuated to.”
- Provide information so that people know how and when and where they go to access that service.
- Provide information to all evacuees on how they can transfer or access their prescriptions so they can stay healthy.
- Provide activities for children and adults at all evacuation sites. “Activities are super important for kids right now because it calms their parents. An anxious parent makes an anxious kid, so we need everybody to be calm right now.
- Provide information on the long-term plan for rehousing those who have lost their homes. “I've sat with people who have these questions. First of all, they will say, what day is it? And I'm like, I don't know anymore. I don't know anymore either. And the other question they will ask is, what is going to happen to me? Where will I live? Does the government have an answer or response that will reassure? It doesn't have to be a perfect answer, but it has to be something and it has to be information.”
- In the absence of funding from government and access to resources, some have turned to insurance. “But the problem that I'm hearing there is there are time limits on the insurance coverage and the individuals from the north have to pay a deductible and their premium will go up. They can't afford the deductible... Will the government provide reimbursement for those people whose payments were delayed? The big question for many who have lost their homes is, what does the future look like? And they need hope.”
