It makes good sense to have an emergency operations centre for the Cowichan Valley.
Trying to coordinate during a disaster, such as communities in the Interior faced this summer with the wildfires, from the Cowichan Valley Regional District offices in the heart of Duncan would be cumbersome, and would hinder deployment of personnel.
So putting together such a centre is a good idea.
But why the CVRD can’t incorporate Cowichan Search and Rescue into such a centre is baffling.
SAR has been told it has to vacate its home at Bings Creek (which was billed as “permanent” when it opened) to make way for the new operations centre, which will take over the space where SAR is currently housed. Everyone acknowledges that while adequate, the space wasn’t perfect for SAR, which had hopes of expanding facilities to offer new training and the like. But any home is better than no home at all.
And SAR provides a vital service to the Cowichan Valley. Its volunteers are incredibly knowledgeable and skilled with everything from rope rescue to swiftwater saves. And they provide this expertise free of charge as volunteers.
We were recently reminded of just how dedicated they are when we heard about how members went out on Christmas Day to rescue an angler on the Cowichan River. This kind of service is amazing and deserves our utmost support, not being booted from their home base.
And doesn’t it seem only logical to include an organization with this much expertise to offer into an emergency operations centre? It would be taxpayer money well spent to look into the possibility of constructing a purpose-built, and this time really permanent, home for SAR at Bings Creek alongside the new operations centre.
One would imagine SAR could very easily have a part to play should there be a disaster of some kind in Cowichan, whether that’s an earthquake or a flood or a fire.
We’d venture to guess it’s one expense the public could actually get behind if the regional district, Duncan, North Cowichan and Lake Cowichan were to include some kind of one-time grant in their budgets for construction.