Northern College announces partnership to help fill demand for disaster workers

The country is seeing a growing need for professionals who can manage disaster situations like floods, forest fires and global pandemics, according to industry experts.

With an increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters—most recently massive floods in British Columbia and Atlantic Canada, expansive forest fires around the country and a global pandemic—Northern College's dean of health sciences and emergency services said communities need trained workers who can guide crisis response plans.

"We're just never sure how these new emergencies are going to develop and we need to be able to address them with properly trained staff," said Sarah Campbell.

"Municipalities have now realized that they really need ... teams fully prepared for these eventualities."

Campbell said emergency management is a growing field both in Canada and around the world — which is why the college is now partnered with the Justice Institute of British Columbia to create a better pipeline for people to enter the field.

People who complete Northern's online post-graduate "Emergency Management, Terrorism and Pandemic Response" certificate will get a fast-track to a four-year emergency management degree from the Justice Institute.

The institute's program director, Darren Blackburn, said municipalities and crisis response agencies will be needing more emergency managers, as well as boots-on-the-ground workers who are trained to handle disaster situations.

They will need to be able to adapt to new types of emergencies, perhaps work in new types of jobs, and create response plans tailored to particular communities, Blackburn said.

"The future really is something that students can help shape and help inform, as they interpret how these different hazards are impacting their communities and businesses and can start to shape what those practices will be," Blackburn said.

"We're still going to need public works staff that are going to help repair those roads, repair those bridges. We need other first responders that are going to know how to work around those hazards."