If Huntsville/Lake of Bays Fire Chief Gary Monahan were a man prone to blushing he would’ve blushed at the remarks made by Huntsville Director of Infrastructure and Emergency Services Tarmo Uukkivi during a briefing of the Town’s latest flood event at the April 24 regular council meeting.
During a brief rundown of the latest flood event in the Town of Huntsville (a full report is expected later this month) and congratulatory remarks regarding the work and effective communication of the emergency control team, Ukkivi acknowledged the Monahan’s efforts.
“I would just like to say that I’ve been involved in a lot of incidents around the province throughout my career [and] I just want to acknowledge the work of our Town CEMC (Community Emergency Management Coordinator) Gary Monahan, our Fire Chief,” said Ukkivvi. “It was actually one of the best performances I’ve seen by a CEMC from across the province. He really brought the Emergency Control Group together. Really ran those meetings extremely efficiently and extremely well. He brought in all of the required expertise… he was boots on the ground out there. Every day, often a couple of times a day, he was checking all the sites for a visual inspection. That, to me, for the role that he was playing in this emergency, was going above and beyond and I just want [to give] my personal thanks to Gary in front of council and the public,” said Uukkivi.
Monahan, who wasn’t expecting that, said it was a great team effort “and they made it easy for my first time.” He referred to the ten-day event as significant. “We weren’t quite [at] the numbers of 2019, but we were close.”
Councillor Bob Stone wanted to know if there were lessons learned and whether flooding could be expected as the new annual normal.
Monahan said that while Uukkivi had analyzed all the data, “If you’re going to ask me is this the norm? I would say yes. If you had asked me would we have brush fires in the middle of November close to December, I would’ve said no but we are, so I think it’s the norm… I think a discussion for later is what are we going to do if this is going to continue…”
In terms of what to expect as a new normal, Uukkivi said: “The only comment that I’ll make, the clarity I’ll give that, is that the new normal is unpredictability. So it’s not to say that we’ll be flooding every year, for sure, in fact, we might see drought instead of flooding where we should be flooding. The new normal, in terms of climate change, is the unpredictability of it and the fact that we have to be responsive and be able to have built flexible plans that can be adjusted on the fly, just because we don’t know what’s coming next.”
In terms of lessons learned, both Monahan and Uukkivi agreed that communication was key and felt it was done efficiently. “I’m not saying it was perfect but if somebody else could come up with something that was needed, I would certainly take the feedback, but communication is probably one of the best things we did,” said Monahan.
Councillor Jason FitzGerald thanked them both and said the feedback he received from members of the public was that they felt informed and knew where sandbags were if they needed them.
Councillor Scott Morrison questioned how big of an impact the swing bridge plays in damming up the water. “And if so, is there anything that can be done there short of replacing the swing bridge and all of us wearing that decision,” he questioned. “Is there something that could let the water… whether it’s pumping or dredging or piping, something like that? Let me be clear,” he added. “I’m not saying we replace the swing bridge!”
Monahan said will form part of a later discussion and although it is not his expertise, the issue is something that could be looked at in order to mitigate high water flows. Huntsville Mayor Nancy Alcock said that is a discussion that could take place as part of a wholesome analysis.
Huntsville CAO Denise Corry said that with respect to how the Town interacted with other municipalities, she’d been told by other area CAOs that the communication shared with them was instrumental in them being able to inform their own immediate communities. “So we’re at the top end, everything that comes here is going their way so we did have those positive comments as well so thank you for a great job in that regard.”
Alcock also noted that the District Chair made a comment about the communication coming out of the Town of Huntsville and thanked both Uukkivi and Monahan for a job well done.
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