Disaster communication expert lends support on forest fire front

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Peter Anderson spent much of his summer focusing ahead of B.C.’s raging forest fires — and helping to lay groundwork that will aid in future responses.

The associate communication professor spent several weeks in the Provincial Regional Emergency Operations Centre in Kamloops as part of the advance planning team.

Anderson assessed the risk levels of critical communication facilities threatened by fire, worked to develop alternative communication plans, and created an electronic mapping team to build and disseminate maps for those assisting in response and evacuation planning.

He is back in the classroom, where students are learning from his first-hand experiences in his timely course — Communication to Mitigate Disasters. He has twice returned to the operations centre and remains on standby.

Initially, Anderson went to Kamloops to assess communication needs during response to the McLure/Barriere fire. He soon became a key resource on several fronts for subsequent fires and stayed for the next three weeks. He was in the Kamloops centre during the August 22 Okanagan Mountain park disaster, which saw more than 230 homes destroyed.

Anderson provided similar assistance during the Salmon Arm forest fires in 1998. His expertise is utilized locally, through his work to enhance communication systems for search and rescue groups, as well as abroad. He created the United Nations’ first Internet gateway for its international decade for disaster reduction 10 years ago.

Anderson’s telematics research lab at SFU houses the Provincial Emergency Program (PEP) website, which at the peak of the fires logged nearly one million hits a day. In response, an SFU team worked to ensure it stayed up and created a backup site.

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