Headlines News Emergency & disaster management
N.S. premier mulls letting towns issue flood alerts as expert sees wider problems

Aug. 10, 2023, Halifax – Nova Scotia’s premier is mulling letting small towns issue emergency alerts during flooding events, but one expert says there are wider problems behind the province’s flood preparedness.

Tim Houston told reporters Wednesday his government is looking into decentralizing the ability to issue Ready Alerts to local emergency management officials.

During the flooding in Nova Scotia on July 21 and 22, it took two hours to issue an alert from the time a volunteer deputy fire chief called for one.

Blair Feltmate, a University of Waterloo expert on climate adaptation, says it may be helpful to give local officials more power to directly issue Ready Alerts.

But he says doing so is not a solution without providing local authorities more resources and training.

He says there are numerous other problems with Nova Scotia’s flooding preparedness, and he is calling for an independent review to establish what went wrong during the recent floods.