It was voted B.C.'s best small town. But Kimberley also leads the pack on planning for climate emergencies

As more rural towns across B.C. are bracing for future natural disasters, one B.C. mayor says every community's brush with an emergency is a chance to prepare for the worst.

"With the disaster in Lytton [B.C.], for example, many, many communities are paying a lot closer attention to this now," said Don McCormick, mayor of Kimberley, a city of more than 8,000 in the East Kootenay. "Because it could happen to us."

His own community's close call came in 2018: five years ago, the whole city was put under a wildfire evacuation alert, and residents in one area outside the city were ordered to leave their homes.

"When you've got a wind roaring down that valley … it would not have taken very long for that fire to reach town," he told CBC News in an interview.

"Fortunately, nothing happened. But what it did was spur an urgency, on the part of the entire community, to do what we need to do."

Today, one climate disaster planning expert is praising Kimberley as a leader among small towns readying for multiple emergencies.

The city was voted by CBC readers "B.C.'s best small town" in a contest last spring.

'Crucial and shocking for people'

With grant funding for climate planning, the city has brought in academics, planning experts, and the province over several decades to think deeper about many of the things that could go wrong — and to take action on them.

"Kimberley was one of the very first," recalled Trevor Murdock, a climate scientist with the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, who helped the town model the climate future in the mid-2000s. "Kimberley was kind of ahead of the game in ... engaging the community itself.

"They had workshops where the public was invited, early on in the process and then later on as well ... to have community buy-in."

Surrounded by forests, with a river flowing through several neighbourhoods, Kimberley planned ahead for fires, floods, chemical plant accidents, sewage spills in their drinking water, evacuations — even a local electricity supply, since the community hosts a major solar power plant.

They educated businesses and residents, and spent considerable time reducing combustible fuels such as coniferous trees in and around town.

"Kimberley had two routes in and out, and both would have been cut off in about eight hours with prevailing winds and a fire," said Stephen Sheppard, director of the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning at the University of British Columbia. "And they had flooding issues … with the creeks.

"Showing that scenario — visualizing what these impacts are before they happen — was crucial and shocking for people. But it urged them into enacting many policies … a whole bunch of adaptation plans on these multiple climate change impacts."

That work has been ongoing for nearly two decades. Last winter, Kimberley unveiled a video aimed at businesses and tourism operators to plan for disasters, and the city provides handouts at City Hall and online for families to plan well ahead for what they'll do if forced to flee.

The handouts include household checklists, essentials to pack in a go-bag if you have to flee, reminders about taking medications and insurance papers, and even coloured signs to display in windows for help.

"Kimberley, like a lot of communities, used to wait until something happened and then run to the province," McCormick explained. "We've just built [emergency planning] into the regular planning that we do in the community.

"We're pretty proud of the efforts we've made."

'The resources are out there'

UBC's Sheppard said climate disasters are predicted to get larger and more frequent — and the chances of multiple emergencies happening at the same time is also increased. 

For instance, a wildfire could strand a community if it burns across all exit roads and the local airstrip. But rural communities also face other disasters such as floods, landslides, chemical spills, drinking water shortages, or power failures.

"We can expect more of these compounding impacts; it's that simple," Sheppard said. "Power, water, food, supplies — all of the essentials are all going to be threatened sometime or another."

Many of what he called "compounding" impacts make planning ahead much more challenging. But while the task is both daunting and expensive, Sheppard hopes other communities in B.C. might take inspiration from Kimberley and others like it — and plan ahead.

The Union of B.C. Municipalities oversees a provincially funded Community Emergency Preparedness Fund, which Kimberley has successfully applied for. It also got money from the Columbia Basin Trust and the Real Estate Foundation of B.C. in the past for this work.

Kimberley's mayor Don McCormick said municipal governments should focus on "core services we have to deliver," but civil society also has a vital role.

Ingrid Liepa, a climate planning consultant, authored the city's trailblazing 2009 climate risks report. Today she's with the Kimberley-Cranbrook Food Hub, and says food security will be increasingly crucial in emergencies.

"Part of emergency response is going to fall to private citizens, and how well they're working together will make a difference," she said. "Building up those local and regional food systems really does make a difference in terms of resiliency when supply chains are disrupted.

"Those kinds of things strengthen the connective tissue in a community."

But Murdock, who is currently seconded to Environment Canada's Canadian Centre for Climate Services, cautioned even forward-looking places like Kimberley need to reassess their risks at least every five years as data changes.

"You'd rather the surprises come up during the planning process, 'Oh, we're not actually protected against this risk,'" he said. "You want to learn that during the planning process — not during the events actually happening."

Mitigating the impacts of climate change is not a quick fix, nor is it cheap, warned McCormick. His city reviews their risks regularly, and has now incorporated such initiatives into all of its planning processes, McCormick said, instead of waiting for the next danger to confront it.

"There is a tendency or a tardiness to want to jump in with both feet," he said. "The resources are out there, they may not be as much as we need, but … it's really important for municipalities to be proactive.

"People will get on board, but they need good leadership from the municipality in order to make that happen."