Helping prepare for, respond to, and recover from major North Shore-wide emergencies is a priority for our fire department.

The comprehensive Major Emergency Operations Plan and our Pandemic/Infectious Disease Plan are living documents that are continually updated to stay relevant and effective.

All three North Shore fire departments, along with our partner agencies, strive for continous improvement in our approaches to emergency management, focusing on organizational and community resiliency. We achieve this through committed agency collaboration, ongoing training, and simulated event exercises to ensure we remain operationally ready for emergencies now and into the future.

Major Emergency Operations Plan (MEOP)

Each year we participate in a tri-municipal training exercise designed to prepare us to respond to large-scale incidents resulting in the failure of critical infrastructure, communications, and supply chains.

The Major Emergency Operations Plan (MEOP) resulted from the District’s Earthquake Ready Action Plan, designed to strengthen our earthquake resiliency in four key areas — mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery — by focusing on the people, buildings, infrastructure and the most vulnerable systems.

All three municipalities review and test the plan annually during field exercises that replicate a post-disaster environment when all resources are overwhelmed.

In 2022, with participation from all three municipalities, NSEM facilitated training exercises to practice activating our MEOP. This provided simulations to assess our procedures that we may encounter in a Department Operation Centre (DOC), which is used to coordinate response activities, gather real-time intelligence, provide logistical and operations support, and maintain a chronological report of incidents and status updates in the event of an emergency.

The timing of the field exercises aligned again with the annual Great British Columbia ShakeOut earthquake drill to coordinate the District’s earthquake initiatives with provincial efforts.

Urban Search and Rescue

Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) provides critical resources and a specially trained task force of personnel with medical, fire suppression, emergency response, search and rescue, and engineering backgrounds.

In 2022, DNVFRS completed outfitting a response-ready structural collapse/urban search and rescue trailer. This coincided with a two-day exercise involving the 12 members of this team. USAR teams deploy in the field with specialized tools, training, and equipment to remove debris and help extract people trapped in major structural collapses during naturally occurring emergencies such as earthquakes.

Our members regularly attend monthly training sessions alongside Canada Task Force (CANTF-1), the provincial Heavy Urban Search and Rescue (HUSAR) team based in Vancouver. This ensures a high level of interoperability and enhances our interagency relationships.

Following program guidelines set by Public Safety Canada, DNVFRS continues working towards ensuring all our firefighters have the training and equipment to support our team at the appropriate levels and to be interoperable with our CANTF-1 partners.

Marine Firefighting

DNVFRS is an active partner alongside West Vancouver Fire & Rescue, North Vancouver City Fire Department, and Vancouver Fire & Rescue when responding to marine emergencies.

In 2022, 14 additional North Shore firefighters completed Shipboard Firefighting for Land based Firefighters.   This training was to prepare for, respond to, and recover from several emergencies that can occur on the water. This increases the number of North Shore firefighters qualified to this standard to over 100, including 82 from the DNVFRS.  

The Justice Institute of British Columbia (JIBC) delivered this training program hosted by our partners at Seaspan Vancouver Shipyards.

The programs are a model of interagency collaboration, with the following agencies actively participating in each session:

• Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue (RCMSAR)
• Royal Canadian Mounted Police Marine Unit
• Vancouver Fire & Rescue Services Fireboat
• Vancouver Police Department Marine Unit
• Port of Vancouver

North Shore Emergency Management

North Shore Emergency Management (NSEM) is an inter-municipal agency that provides emergency management services to all three North Shore municipalities. In 2022, DNVFRS participated with NSEM in training initiatives and disaster relief exercises that emulate real-life responses to scenarios such as urban interface fires, earthquakes, floods, and other emergencies.

NSEM is a valued partner agency that also supports the Disaster Emergency Readiness Training (DERT) program, which aims to improve the District’s operational resiliency in the event of large-scale emergencies.

Learn more about the work that North Shore Emergency Management does for North Shore Communities on their website.

Visit NSEM.ca

35-Member Extended Operations Unit

In 2018, we established the District of North Vancouver Extended Operations Unit (EOU) to strengthen the response to local, naturally occurring emergencies, increase community resiliency, and facilitate swift recovery from a natural disaster.

The 35-member team consists of DNV employees — many of whom already have relevant skills and experience from their ‘day’ jobs (arborists, heavy equipment operators, and so on). In the event of earthquakes, landslides, floods, wildfires, and other natural disasters, this team would be called on to support DNVFRS.

During large or significant naturally occurring emergencies, this group of trained staff will enhance our capacity and capability to mitigate incidents.

EOU Training in 2022

In 2022, DNVFRS instructors delivered the following training opportunities to EOU members to enhance emergency response skills and knowledge:

• Wildfire Basic Fire Suppression and Safety (S-100)
• Wildfire Entrapment Avoidance (S-185)
• Red Cross First Aid Level I Training
• Initial Attack Crew Training
• CISM/Resilient Minds Training
• Chainsaw Safety