Interior Health kept long-term care residents safe during wildfires

September 27, 2023

When long-term care residents throughout the region had to evacuate this summer due to wildfires, Interior Health team members stepped up repeatedly to help. Nearly 1,000 long-term care residents were evacuated over the summer at various times due to wildfire threats, and have since been able to return home.

In this Story…

How the evacuations came about

The ways IH staff answered the call of duty

Infographic: Wildfire emergency response by the numbers

How the evacuations came about

It all started on Aug. 4 when 124 long-term care residents in Osoyoos were evacuated due to the wildfire threat. As additional fires started in other regions, that situation quickly developed into a summer nobody will soon forget.

On Aug. 18, 861 residents in West Kelowna, Kelowna, Lake Country and Chase were forced out of their homes in a moment’s notice.

“During the time when the wildfire was encroaching [the Okanagan and Shuswap regions], we had many different people that we had to coordinate all at the same time,” said Joanna Harrison, IH executive director of Seniors Specialized Care Transformation. “One of the first and foremost things we need to look at is the residents’ safety and make the decision - the hard decision - whether to evacuate or not evacuate.”

Joanna says it’s difficult moving one patient at a time, not to mention close to 900 during the late-summer evacuations.

The ways IH staff answered the call of duty

Susan Brown, president and CEO of Interior Health, says she admired witnessing staff rally around each other and the entire region during this unprecedented wildfire season. In particular, she says the organization’s vision, mission and values shone throughout the emergency.

The value that really has resonated with people across the organization is compassion. I can’t think of a stronger way to show that value living from what I saw on the ground. People extended their own homes to people who were evacuated or lost their homes. Their generosity went beyond work, and that is compassion in action.

-- Susan Brown, president and CEO of Interior Health

Joanna noted the compassion could be seen everywhere.

“I can think of the Digital Health employee that dove in the car and drove the laptops down to the new site [in Summerland] to ensure people have access to the health records,” noted Joanna. “I can recall the times where we’ve called on individuals to drive the buses - the therapy staff to help transfer people in and out of the homes. We have the support staff that have packed snacks for the drive on the buses, and the support staff dropping linens off at two o’clock in the morning and having to prepare food for an additional 100 people.”

Three people stand outside holding balloons and two signs, one with hearts that says we missed you, and another with stars that says happy to have you all home.

Ten long-term care homes within Interior Health were evacuated to 32 different sites, including in Vancouver Coastal Health.

After authorities declared an “all clear” and it was deemed safe to begin repatriation, a complex phased repatriation process was initiated. The final residents returned home on Sept. 13 in West Kelowna.

I’d like to give a great shout-out and thanks to all the staff that have worked on repatriating all of these 900 people across IH. It’s a tremendous effort everyone has done - gone above and beyond - both the sending sites, receiving sites and the recovery team. So thank you very much to everyone for their great work.

-- Deb Runge, Interior Health’s executive director of patient access, transport & emergency response

President and CEO Susan Brown also extended a heartfelt thank you and her gratitude for all the hard work Interior Health employees put into caring for others during the emergency. She also thanks everyone across the province who stepped in to help care for patients.

“All our staff - physicians, volunteers - they’re always willing to lean into this work, but my colleagues across the province - the other CEOs in the geographical health authorities - when these things happen, they’re always there for us, and Vancouver Coastal took some of our partnered residents here because we were getting saturated for where to move people, so incredible sense of community and that’s what it takes to get through a disaster.”