No emergency text alerts? Questions surround lack of fire warnings in Shuswap

A growing number of residents in the North Shuswap area are voicing concerns that that they did not receive emergency text alerts from the AlertReady emergency notification system as an exceptionally aggressive fire swept toward their communities, trapping some while others narrowly escaped with their lives.

A growing number of residents in the North Shuswap area are voicing concerns that that they did not receive emergency text alerts from the AlertReady emergency notification system as an exceptionally aggressive fire swept toward their communities, trapping some while others narrowly escaped with their lives.

Some living in the Scotch Creek, Celista, and Swlax area had urgent notifications around 2 p.m. on Friday, August 18, through the Alertable app widely used across British Columbia. But it appears no one received the distinctive broadcast-intrusive alerts through AlertReady that come with a distinctive klaxon buzz and vibrate as they’re received by most phones on 5G networks. 

Pelmorex, the company that runs the software, tells CTV News that they “successfully processed the wildfire alerts” and are “not aware of any distribution issues,” while the Ministry of Emergency Management says the texts were issued to the Skwlax te Secwepemculecw (Little Shuswap First Nation) at 4:06 p.m., the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District at 7:48 p.m. and the Thompson-Nicola Regional District at 8:12 p.m.

The Bush Creek East fire, previously also known as the Lower East Adams Lake fire before the two fires merged into a 43,000 hectare megafire, has damaged or destroyed 168 structures. Fire officials say it was a rare rank-six fire, which they call a conflagration.

CTV News asked the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District about the gap between the evacuation order through the Alertable app, which has to be downloaded and the alert region specified, versus the AlertReady texts, which are automatically sent through 5G networks in a geographical area.

“We didn't send (AlertReady) until later in the day and we'll look at how we're going to integrate with the AlertReady system in the future, if we're going to engage it earlier,” said CSRD emergency operations centre director, Derek Sutherland. “This is our first use of AlertReady. This is a fairly new system for us, just rolled out last summer, and I think that we're getting more comfortable with using it.”

British Columbia has been the slowest province to adapt to using the emergency alerting system. During the 2021 atmospheric river and heat dome events, officials were roundly criticized for having a poor grasp of the technology, which was only authorized for tsunami alerts at the time.