Alberta establishes new disaster response agency

Alberta has established a new agency to co-ordinate disaster response, a change spurred byan oil spill near a lake east of Edmonton.

In August of 2005, an overturned freight train dumped 1.3 million litres of heavy bunker fuel oil and wood preservative near Lake Wabamun.

Government officials were criticized just as heavily as CN because it took days to get equipment to Wabamun to contain and clean up the mess. A few months later,Alberta's Environmental Protection Commission recommended the creation of a single agency to handle disaster response.

The new Emergency Management Alberta Agency will ensure services are better co-ordinated next time, said municipal affairs ministerRob Renner Monday.

"By having a centralized call centre, emergency management expertise will be part of the response, right from the very beginning," he said.

'What strengths?'

The umbrella agency will combine "the existing strengths"of thecurrent agency, Emergency Management Alberta,with theAlberta Fire Commissioner's Office, according to a release.

Gordon Soneff, who has a cottage on Lake Wabamun near where the train went off the tracks, said the changes are just window dressing.

"I still haven't heard anything but a bunch of mumbo jumbo," he said. "They're going to combine their strengths? What strengths? There's no strengths here, it took them days to mobilize."

Soneff said he has no confidence in the province's abilities to react to emergencies, even with a new agency in charge.