HALLOWEEN HAPPENINGS | Ghosts and goblins get ready for a night of tricks and treats [A6]
Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012
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Disaster response observed
TRACTOR TURN
RICHARD ROLKE Morning Star Staff
LISA VANDERVELDE/MORNING STAR
Chris Voelker, of Kelowna (front), and Martin Clements, of Salmon Arm, make a tight turn as they compete in the lawn tractor races at the 12th annual Armstrong-Spallumcheen Chamber of Commerce Harvest Pumpkin Festival Saturday at the fairgrounds.
Earthquake rattles VSS grad ROGER KNOX Morning Star Staff
Even during an interview Monday morning with a reporter from his hometown, Gordon Horner couldn’t escape that rumbling feeling. “Earthquake!” said Horner, 49, a physician in the Village of Queen Charlotte on Haida Gwaii, which has been dealing with a magnitude 7.7 earthquake and numerous aftershocks since the quake hit Saturday at 8:04 p.m. “Oh, just a little one.” Since Saturday, Horner estimates at least 60 aftershocks have hit Haida Gwaii and that he has felt “at least a half-dozen of them.” “One was a pretty good size, about noon on Sunday,” he said. “I was working doing some paperwork at the (medical) clinic. I was the only one in the building and it rattled pretty good for about 15-to-20 seconds.
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Vernon’s Gordon Horner is a physician in Haida Gwaii. He was on-call at the Queen Charlotte Hospital Saturday when an earthquake hit. “It was enough to get me out of my chair going, ‘OK, time to move.’”
Horner, a Vernon Secondary School graduate whose father, Bill, still lives in Vernon, was on-call at Queen Charlotte Island General Hospital Saturday, doing more paperwork and chatting with the nurses who had started night shift when a large rumbling sound began. Realizing it was more than just a passing large truck, Horner headed outside away from the structure and held on to a railing beside a sidewalk. In the middle of the road in front of the hospital was a deer with the “deer-in-theheadlight” look. “The doe was looking like I was, ‘What the hell do I do now?’” chuckled Horner. “We gave each other a deer stare.” Patient capacity at the hospital is 16, and Horner said there were no acute sick people admitted, and only a couple of long-term care patients. Nobody was evacuated.
See HORNER on A3
Earthquakes shaking B.C.’s coast and hurricanes bearing down on the eastern seaboard provide a learning experience for local officials. North Okanagan Emergency Management is observing how the 7.7 magnitude quake in Haida Gwaii and Hurricane Sandy in New York and Ontario are being handled in the hopes they can learn new techniques and improve disaster response here. “There is knowledge in everything whether it’s mistakes made or everything is done perfectly,” said Brent Watson, emerBrent Watson gency preparedness coordinator. Saturday’s earthquake rocked the islands of Haida Gwaii and was felt throughout the province. A tsunami warning was enacted along the west coast and as far away as Hawaii. Along the Atlantic coast, Hurricane Sandy has contributed to high tides and pounding wind. In New York City, thousands of people were evacuated from certain areas while transit and airports ground to a halt. Wind and rain warnings have also been in force in parts of southern Ontario and Quebec. Watson anticipates response information from the quake and hurricane will be provided to groups like his through the Emergency Management Association. “A lot of the stuff that comes out of the States comes to B.C. first,” he said. In B.C., there are 57 hazards that have been identified, everything from a meteorite striking the earth to a chemical spill. “Our plan is developed to respond to everything,” said Watson, adding that while the scope of the disaster may vary, the people and techniques involved are constant. “We respond the same way to all of them.” NOEM had a busy year, including wildfires, mass flooding along the Shuswap River and residential fires. “Floods are tough because there are a lot of expectations but there’s not much you can do to hold back the water,” said Watson.
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