Canada's Heavy Urban Search and Rescue

"(It's) a last-ditch effort to salvage this national program. It's a huge concern. We're not just a heavy-lift team or a structural-collapse team. It's really an all-hazards approach."
"We have the ability to produce 30,000 litres of fresh water a day from swamp water -- all these things that really mitigate most of the disasters."
"If we have something major ... we can rely on, talk the same language and (have) the same position and same equipment as the three other heavy teams."
"That truly will be lost -- that really is the sad part about it. We would be moving from about a $3-million cache ... down to a $1-million cache of equipment. Our team size would move from just over a 125 staff to just under a hundred."
Vancouver Fire Chief John McKearney

Chief McKearney is pleading for the federal safety officials at Public Safety Canada to reconsider their decision to cease funding an integrated team approach operating in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario, to respond to national or international disasters. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews announced the cancellation of federal funding after the 2012 fiscal year; another attempt to reduce the deficit.

The team has the capability to be completely self-sufficiently operational for up to ten days. Without funding they would be forced to rely on host communities to lodge their members, provide transportation and supplies and food. When these emergency teams are responding to disasters, the places where they travel to for the purpose of lending their emergency expertise are in no position to offer those fundamental provisions; they are in an emergency state of desperate conditions.

Comprised of medics, firefighters, engineers and search and rescue crews -- first-responders all, in any situation, anywhere there is an emergency or a disaster -- the integrated task force co-ordinates the efforts of emergency responders to focus on emergency situations across the four provinces should natural disasters such as landslides, earthquakes, major flooding, building collapses or other unexpected large-scale tragedy ensue to test the survival capabilities of all concerned.

The service is unique and critical because four heavy urban teams are able to collaborate across provincial borders, using their specialized skill sets to those first-responders already on the scene and representing local emergency outfits such as police, fire and municipal emergency departments that serve the affected area. In the event that local first-responders have been deleteriously impacted, they cannot be as effective as might be anticipated. The appearance of the specialized emergency response team with their unique blend of experience and capability ensures that the affected area receives immediate and critical attention.

Canada, warns Chief McKearney, risks losing that "plug-and-play approach" if the Heavy Urban Search and Rescue team faces existential insecurity, hampering the continuation of annual training and team co-ordination. And how much of an annual outlay coming out of federal government coffer's is represented by this decision? The total sum is a $1.6-million yearly commitment to keep a program that has more than proven its value, afloat.

Just incidentally, consolidating that old adage that the shoemaker's son goes unshod, Canada has committed to another $13-million in aid to Jordan to assist with the influx of Syrian refugees, and is considering its outlay of the five-year $300-million commitment to the Palestinian Authority.