Mother wants faster disaster response reform, one year after son died in flood

HALIFAX — The mother of a boy who died in a Nova Scotia flood a year ago says her grief returns daily, along with her frustration over what she sees as the province’s slow pace of preparing for climate disasters.

Tera Sisco’s six-year-old son, Colton Sisco, died after the vehicle he was in overturned during torrential rain on July 22, 2023. About 258 millimetres (10 inches) of rain fell in overnight flash flooding in the community of West Hants, a rural area northwest of Halifax.

“It’s still a struggle, every day,” Sisco said in a recent telephone interview. As the one-year anniversary of her son’s death approaches, she said her memories of being with him before the flood are “on repeat.”

“It’s hard. …there’s a part of me that still doesn’t want to believe it happened.”

Natalie Harnish, six, died in the same vehicle as Sisco, while 52-year-old Nick Holland and 14-year-old Terri-Lynn Keddy were dragged by a vehicle on the same road and also died.

The tragedy has prompted repeated calls for the Progressive Conservative government to improve the province’s emergency warning system, as the province is hit by extreme weather events with worrying regularity.

A recent study by the municipality of West Hants found that two hours and 41 minutes passed between the first rescue efforts and the time the province issued an alert urging citizens to “stay indoors.” Blair Feltmate, director of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo, called that “far too long a delay.”

Sisco said she was concerned that during the July 11 Annapolis Valley flood, there was another three-hour delay between the first reports of rescues and an emergency alert. That night, 13-year-old Eli Young was swept into a drainage ditch in Wolfville an hour before an alert was sent.

“My heart breaks for that family, for that boy and for the community,” Sisco said.

John Lohr, the minister responsible for the Emergency Measures Organization, said in an interview Thursday that municipalities have a responsibility to send warnings to provincial authorities for distribution. He has sent a letter to administrators and mayors asking them to “be more vigilant in issuing warnings” and asking them to “schedule refresher training for appropriate municipal personnel if necessary.”

However, according to Sisco, the conclusion is that a year later the government still does not appear to have made any significant improvements to the timeliness of the warning system.

“There’s a lot of finger-pointing going on right now, and I think ultimately all levels of government need to sit down and really focus on how do we solve the problem, rather than assigning blame,” she said.

According to Lohr, training is available for regional emergency planners and other municipal staff who want to send out alerts directly, as well as courses on how to fill out forms that need to be sent to the provincial emergency center.

The minister said the government plans to introduce legislation that will create a new department responsible for overseeing regional emergency response. He also pledged to establish a new volunteer emergency response group, the Nova Scotia Guard, and to modernize the emergency management and warning system.

Lohr said the Nova Scotia Guard will allow citizens to enter themselves into a database of skills they can offer in emergencies — “whether it’s operating a chainsaw or making sandwiches” — and he said the province will call on the volunteers when needed.

Opposition parties have criticised the concept and fear that it will deplete the existing volunteer base.

Sisco fears that potential firefighters who perform critical rescue operations during emergencies will choose to join the new volunteer group rather than take on the heavier training burden of the fire or rescue services.

“There’s a lot of work to be done and figured out before we can really say whether we should implement it (the Nova Scotia Guard),” she said. “I’m not sure at this point how it’s going to help.”

Sisco is instead urging the secretary of state to focus on reforming existing systems, such as ensuring that regional emergency coordinators are full-time positions, rather than part-time roles filled by city employees with other responsibilities. She is also lobbying for effective, on-call systems to ensure that a city employee is constantly available to request or issue an alert.

Lohr said the transition to a faster system has been complicated by consultations that indicate many volunteer fire departments are reluctant to take direct responsibility for dispatching emergency messages. However, he said his department is working to have more firefighters and police officers fill that role.

“I expect within a year we will have the Nova Scotia Guard… we will have a new department; we will have fire departments that are trained on this tool,” the minister said.

Brett Tetanish, the chief of the Brooklyn Volunteer Fire Department, which responded to the four deaths, said in an interview that there are now 15 members trained in water rescue and that the department has purchased several boats. Like Sisco, however, he hopes that governments will work together soon to provide earlier warnings and better mobile service in his rural area.

“I just want these levels of government to work together. They owe it to the citizens of this province and to the rescuers,” he said.

Sisco said this week that she needs to take a step back from her work as an advocate and start taking care of herself.

“I’ve had to find the fine balance between exploring ways to improve emergency preparedness and giving myself some time and space to catch my breath,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 22, 2024.

Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press