City, Regional District of Nanaimo Ready to Alert Citizens to Emergencies:

While a recent tsunami warning didn't affect either the City or Regional District of Nanaimo, both local governments have systems in place to deal with natural disasters. Cellphone alerts are among the ways both the city and the region notify residents of imminent danger and Karen Lindsay, city emergency program manager, said city systems depend on the situation. "For example, if you were evacuating a neighbourhood and you had some discretionary time to do it, it could be involving responders going door-to-door. It could be sent out over Twitter and Facebook and played on the radio, for example, to let people know, and advise people, that there's something going on," said Lindsay. She said earthquakes could present a challenge, as they could damage communications infrastructure. The city would utilize social media and call alert, if available, but it also has a direct link into radio stations. "We can actually start sending public messaging out to the radio stations and they would man with their staff, someone there to receive the communications and get them out over the air \& we have a healthy ham radio operators coastal emergency communications, they're part of our emergency response team. We've got ham radio wired in at all four of our reception centres and we also have a radio in our emergency operations centre," Lindsay said.

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