November 14, 2019
Community Futures had an opportunity to share the results of its Wildfire Business Transition Project with government officials and emergency management practitioners at an industry-wide conference in Vancouver recently.
The BC Wildfire Business Transition Project, which is wrapping up at the end of December, was selected as one of the workshop sessions for the Emergency Preparedness and Business Continuity (EPBC) Conference on October 29th.
Karen Eden, General Manager of CF Cariboo Chilcotin, and Deb Arnott, General Manager of CF Sun Country, made the presentation on behalf of the Wildfire Business Transition Project. Dave Peterson, an Assistant Deputy Minister with Emergency Management BC, and Ron Burleson, Executive Director for Community Recovery, were among those attending the presentation.
The EPBC Conference is an annual event organized by the Pacific Northwest Emergency Preparedness Society and the Emergency Preparedness for Industry and Commerce Council, British Columbia’s leading organizations in the emergency management field. More than 400 delegates from across BC and the Pacific Northwest attended the three-day event.
The Wildfire Business Transition Project serves as a model for an innovative and highly-effective approach to business recovery that can be used by other community economic development organizations, local governments and emergency management practitioners to help small and medium-sized businesses, Indigenous communities and not-for-profit organizations in the recovery and rebuilding process following a disaster.
The results to date have been outstanding. The figures below are for the period January 1, 2018 to September 30, 2019. A final report will be produced in early 2020.
