City says flash floods did not warrant public safety alert

As many of Saskatoon’s streets were filling with water Monday afternoon, no notifications were sent out through the City of Saskatoon’s public safety alert program.

Pamela Goulden-McLeod, Saskatoon’s director of emergency management, said a mass emergency alert through the system would’ve gone out had the situation been more dire.

“This was not a life-safety issue,” she said. “That’s what the decision was based on.”

On Monday, Saskatoon’s streets were quickly flooded after a deluge of rain, washing out several intersections and impeding travel on major roadways.

Videos showed people being rescued from cars caught in the flood, with water nearly reaching their passenger windows and strong currents flowing as the water built up and drained.

While the damage from Monday’s storm was significant, no deaths or injuries were reported. During a flood in Saskatoon in 1983, however, a 21-year-old woman drowned in a submerged vehicle.

Goulden-McLeod said she’s grateful the NotifyNow system is being thought of in the wake of the storm, but said it was decided the emergency notification system would not be the appropriate way to share information during the flooding.

“We use it when there’s a public safety situation, particularly a life-safety issue,” Goulden-McLeod said, giving the examples of a plow winds or tornados.

Such instances would require immediate action to be taken by residents, Goulden-McLeod said, and would require evacuation or shelter-in-place orders to be shared. She noted the water was “observable.”

The city launched its emergency centre to address the storm, but after discussions on the subject, Goulden-McLeod said it was decided to communicate information using social media and the news media instead.

“It was a lot of water, but we weren’t asking residents to shelter in place; we weren’t asking them to evacuate a residence … or an area,” she said.

Goulden-McLeod said an after-action review is undertaken each time there is an emergency centre activation to determine what went well and what could be improved for the next situation.

“That definitely is one of the questions,” she said.

The results of that review will inform how the city proceeds in future emergency situations

“Our commitment to residents is that we would use NotifyNow for life-safety situations,” Goulden-McLeod said. “We never want to start overusing it.”

CKOM listener Abdul Ali Sheikh sent us this video showing his son, Sheikh Abdul Qadir, helping people stranded by the flooding on Louise Avenue today.

Listen live for the latest on the flash flooding in Saskatoon: https://t.co/cR9S9oTooQ https://t.co/dJL1jmne2q pic.twitter.com/WLFZ5yiSfo

— 650 CKOM (@CKOMNews) June 21, 2022