Trial By Wildfire: Deploying Our Emergency Response Strategy
Video Source: Anonymous
At 10:30 pm, our team received the notice that we all had been dreading… "There is an out-of-control wildfire southeast of Drayton Valley... all residents, including all the Town of Drayton Valley, must be prepared to evacuate within 30 minutes notice…" recalled Alana Nikiforuk, I.T. Coordinator at Intercon Messaging. "That's when things got real, and our team knew this was going to happen no matter what… and we were going to have to leave."
At this point, the fire was an estimated 4,959 hectares, forcing the immediate evacuation of 7,200+ residents. "Everything was red, there was smoke and cops everywhere… it was like a movie scene," said one Drayton Valley resident to Global News. When the mass exodus began, images of standstill traffic conditions started to pop up on social media, telling a story of a drive that took up to four hours when it was usually just over an hour.
Like many others in our community, Alana quickly gathered up her belongings. She headed North out of the evac zone to meet Gloria Tonne, our Employee Experience Advisor. Once at her location, the Operations Leadership team, including Cheryl Bouchard, our Client Care Manager, and Pat Vos, our CEO, connected to outline and execute the required actions for our business continuity plan. In the meantime, Don Jordan, Pat's husband, was back at the office making sure staff were evacuated safely and gathered critical equipment for the likelihood of it being a long-term evacuation.
Rebecca Foster from our Client Care team was in the nearby community of St. Albert while the evacuation happened. "We were at the hotel for a hockey tournament, and as the events unfolded in Drayton Valley, the severity of the situation soon became real as I started to see numerous people that were evacuated in our hotel lobby."
All Hands On Deck
On the evening of the evacuation, Nadine Sans-Cartier, Taryn Monteith and Devi Derickson, three of our remote agents, as well as Cheryl Bouchard, who already had evacuees at her home, hunkered down for a long night of managing calls, emails, and text messages. Early the following day, Kayleigh Farrell, also from our Client Care team in Ontario, signed on to provide additional relief. "I must say, I have a newfound appreciation of our agents and the difficulty they faced in that moment."
While our remote agents continued to manage calls, Alana worked with our vendors throughout the rest of that night to set up and transition to our temporary dispatch centre in Edmonton. Once settled and the plan rolled out, Gloria, Pat, and Don started to connect with staff to confirm their safety and organize an ad-hoc schedule. Quickly realizing how many of our local staff were displaced or evacuated, all three worked to help employees get settled in Edmonton, Alberta. This gave our agents a safe place to rest their heads, we had relief for those who worked all night, and also a good balance of senior and junior agents to manage phones, including our amazing team of new hires… who without hesitation, jumped in with both feet.
But Wait… We Are Not Out of The Woods Yet
With the wildfire raging within a kilometre of the office, emergency crews planned to shut off all utilities, including our natural gas, which ran our backup generator at the office. This created a new sense of urgency as our team realized we still had a significant challenge ahead of us… keeping our physical communications infrastructure up and running without a reliable power source. To do this, we knew we couldn't rely any longer on the call management infrastructure at our physical location to keep remote operations intact. The decision was immediately made to fast-track a significant system upgrade originally scheduled for the summer of 2023… our move to the cloud-based Amtelco Genesis system.
This is where our industry peers immediately stepped up to assist. AnswerPlus from Hamilton, i24 Call Management Solutions from Montreal, CommAlert from Edmonton, Telelink from St. John's, and our valued vendor partners, Amtelco, The Internet Centre and Yardstick Technologies. We had immense support coast to coast, from backup agents to specially trained system programmers, who assisted our team with the transition to our new call management platform. "I was originally freaking out about launching Genesis and the new web agent without formal training and appropriate time to ensure programming was complete, but by the end of my shift, the transition was done, and I was absolutely thrilled to be using the new system…" said Nadine who was remotely supporting clients from Ontario.
By this time, the team had resettled twice, eventually finding a more permanent space at an Edmonton dispatch centre owned by AnswerPlus. "The last few days were a blur… and I missed my daughter's dance competitions" said Cheryl, "but I am thankful for being able to support my team through the many challenges and successes… and that I could provide a safe space for my friends and family who were evacuated."
What Did This All Mean for Our Business
Our service is critical to many of our clients across Canada and this unforeseen disaster could have brought our contact centre to its knees. It had the potential to cause catastrophic losses in productivity and influence client turnover… but it didn't.
The bottom line to the successful management of this crisis was that our team didn’t just consider our challenges with our digital infrastructure, call management process and redundancy but also took each and every staff member into account. The primary priorities were clear at that moment; continue to provide uninterrupted service to our clients and maintain the safety and well-being of our employees.
It wasn't an option to be unavailable to our clients, as we had invested so much of our time and effort into our organization. The team pulled out all stops to continue to provide responsive support for our clientele, and we owe our success to our leadership, agents, industry peers, vendor partners, and the universe. Each one made the difference between our business grinding to a halt or service continuing as if nothing had happened – at least from our customers' perspective.
When the dust settled, we identified the primary factors influencing our emergency plan and the speed at which we could return to normal operations.
Draft a Crisis Plan that Considers Your People
Since any natural disaster can last for any length of time, response effectiveness depended on our ability to integrate our team into the "temporary normal." Although certainty and outcomes can never be guaranteed, understanding how a community-wide disaster affects your team outside of work is difficult. We found that a familiar structure and defined processes fostered a positive and secure environment for our staff. This is because each person knew what was expected of them, what they could expect of others, and that their safety and well-being were always considered.
Develop an Understanding of Your Risk Landscape and Impacts
Understanding how impending hazards could affect our business and implementing risk reduction and response strategies assisted our team in returning to normal operations efficiently and effectively. Whether your plan includes the means to work from home or the transition to backup systems, working to develop and adopt a comprehensive continuity plan increases the likelihood of success when a business is faced with an emergency.
Employee safety
Activation of an emergency communication plan
Identifying and prioritizing critical systems and processes
Activation of backup systems
Alternate worksites and remote operations
Engaging external support
You Have Friends in More Places Than You Know
People want to help in emergencies and are often driven by prosocial behaviour, where selfless concern for the welfare of others comes first. For example, our industry colleagues, which we would rather refer to as our friends, stepped up immediately. Within our network of colleagues, there are many collaborative relationships, and with a few quick phone calls, several answering services across Canada pulled together a recovery team of agents and programmers to support our emergency evacuation plan.
During exceptional times like these, we want to acknowledge and thank everyone who has supported and reached out to our team. We had staff, colleagues, and vendors work day and night to ensure our success, and we couldn't be more appreciative or grateful for those who supported us.
Keep it Real
Too often, leaders try to make a crises fit tactical plans rather than adapt to the situation's reality. In doing so, they discount information that doesn't fit their narrative. Our team worked to keep things real, moving with the ebb and flow of the situation as it unfolded. Like Gloria stated in our debrief meeting, "When we first evacuated, we started with plan 1A, and as we moved forward, we quickly went to plan 42Z… remaining flexible as new challenges arose."
The Buck Creek wildfire did provide a powerful experience that was personified by the team members working so diligently to do their part. These individuals worked tirelessly as a team. Unified in one common goal, working side-by-side to strategically ensure our contact centre and services remained operational. It's the dynamic every business owner dreams of having in place when serious events occur.
Be an Active Sense Maker
Effective crisis management includes rapidly assessing the torrent of information swirling around (especially news spread through social media) and discerning meaningful patterns. As events shifted, we helped employees and clients understand precisely what was happening and how challenges were evolving. In other words, we attempted to make sense of the confusion, not believing everything we read online and trying to stay one step ahead of unfolding events.
During an incident such as a natural disaster, preparedness becomes an opportunity to demonstrate corporate social responsibility while safeguarding employees, clients, and community. A culture of readiness, flexibility, trust, and innovation is a win-win for everyone. In the end, it makes us all safer and more resilient.
Current State of Alberta’s Wildfires
The amount of land in Alberta burned by wildfires this year has hit a tragic figure. Officials say 1,017,000 hectares have burned so far in 2023, making it the most destructive wildfire season in the province's history. Currently, 1,213 firefighters from across Canada and the United States are assisting in battling the wildfires across Alberta.
On average, Alberta has approximately 191 wildfires throughout the entire year… and fire season doesn't usually ramp up until early June. The Buck Creek wildfire was brought on by a witches' brew of record-setting spring heat, a dry winter, high winds and, unfortunately, and unintended human involvement.
For the latest updates on the Alberta wildfires, visit the link below.
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