VANCOUVER—When Metro Vancouver’s off-duty emergency responders are called in to work following a catastrophic earthquake, many won’t be able to get there.

That’s the conclusion of a study conducted in partnership with Vancouver-area firefighters, which found many departments do not have plans to get their reserves in place when the time comes.

“Emergency plans require that first responders travel to their workplace; however, their ability to access their workplace from their home has not previously been evaluated,” the study reads.

An investigation by the Star found governments are unprepared to provide enough drinking water to residents if a 7.3-magnitude earthquake strikes off Vancouver’s coastline. The emergency-responder study, presented in the fall of 2018, was based off the same scenario.

City of Port Coquitlam human-resources director Steve Traviss, who completed the study in April 2017, examined 14 cities in the Vancouver region and found half of them had fewer than a quarter of their firefighting staff living within the city. His worry is that when roads and bridges collapse after a major quake, first responders will be cut off from places where they’re desperately needed.

The cities most isolated from their firefighters are Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond — all located in the western, pricey part of Metro Vancouver.

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“It’s expensive in the west,” Traviss said in an interview. “As a result of that, there’s a much greater concentration of firefighters in the east.”

Richmond, the sole municipality located on its own island, would only have access to 22 per cent of its firefighters if cut off from surrounding areas, the study found.

City of Richmond spokesman Ted Townsend said the municipality is aware of its low firefighter head count but stressed that key emergency response positions are staffed by those who live within the city.

“There’s a high likelihood they will be available. We do always have a core group of firefighters on staff at any given time. That would be the first-level response in any given emergency,” Townsend said. “We would have a factor of time, you know, to get additional staff in place.”

However, the study found an earthquake of 7.0-magnitude or greater would likely cut off the five river crossings to the island city due to the area’s soft, unstable soils.

Tim Armstrong, president of the Greater Vancouver Fire Chiefs Association, said there are no current solutions to get emergency responders into work. Suggestions in the past included rallying off-duty firefighters in their home cities.

“So let’s say I lived in Abbotsford but I worked in Vancouver, and there was a mandatory recall back to your department. Rather than everybody jumping in their vehicle and trying to make their way to Vancouver or New West or whatever department, could they better utilize having a muster point that’s identified for all first responders?” Armstrong said. Once gathered, they could be transported in groups to the areas most in need by boat or train.

The problem “touches not only firefighters; it touches policing, it touches critical infrastructure,” he added. “One of our biggest assets is engineering — heavy equipment, skilled operators, things like that — so every city’s engineering department is gong to play a critical role.”

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Other solutions include requiring first-responders to live close to their place of employment, but that’s rarely financially feasible. With Vancouver’s home prices among the highest in North America, even Armstrong, a fire chief of a major city, lives outside the city where he works.

“What if no one shows up?” Traviss said. “Those three days after a disaster when the roads are blocked and the bridges are blocked and the military hasn’t come in on their white horses yet ... what do you do with the resources in the meantime?”

The initial plan for the study was to map where other first responders — such as police, paramedics and hospital and utility staff — live in comparison to where they work, but Traviss could not gather sufficient sample sizes for the other professions.