Emergency response plans and roles in agriculture

On this page:

• Producers
• Producer and agriculture associations
• Local authorities
• Indigenous and First Nations communities
• Provincial government
• Federal government

Producers

During an emergency, producers play an important response role. It is the producer’s responsibility to safeguard their business or livestock. Producers can take steps to remain informed about an emergency and make decisions about their operations.

• Learn about what happens during an evacuation
• Be aware of evacuation alerts and orders. Follow Emergency Info BC or @EmergencyInfoBC (Twitter) to get notifications for evacuation alerts and evacuation orders issued by local authorities, and other information you may need to respond and recover from emergencies.
• Put your preparedness plan into action
• Be prepared to relocate your livestock

Producer and agriculture associations

Agricultural producer associations can be an important resource for emergency management for their members. Support that associations provide may include:

• Distributing emergency related information during an incident
• Representing their sector in an Emergency Operations Centre as subject matter experts
• Developing prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery tools for their members

Local authorities

Local authorities in British Columbia include municipalities and regional districts. Every local authority is required under the Emergency and Disaster Management Act (EDMA) to develop, test, and implement local emergency plans for response to emergencies within their jurisdiction.

Local authorities are also required to establish and maintain emergency management organizations to develop and implement preparedness, response and recovery measures.  To assist local authorities with planning for the agricultural aspects of emergencies, the ministry has developed the agriculture appendix template for local authority emergency plans (PDF, 800KB).

Indigenous and First Nation communities

Indigenous and First Nation governments are the first line of response in the event of an emergency on a reserve. 

Indigenous and First Nations governments are responsible for creating and implementing emergency management plans to prepare their communities to cope with an emergency. The provincial and federal governments provide support to First Nations communities under differnt agreements to ensure First Nations reserve communities receive emergency management support comparable to that which is provided to local authorities.

To assist Indigenous and First Nations communities with planning for the agricultural aspects of emergencies, the ministry has developed this template:  Emergency guide to support Indigenous farms and ranches (PDF, 2MB).

General information about emergency preparedness, response and recovery is available through Emergency management in B.C.

Provincial government

The ministry has developed and maintains an overarching emergency management plan that outlines how the ministry will deliver on its responsibilities for emergency management.

Animal disease

In partnership with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (the lead federal agency for foreign animal disease incidents) and with the support of several other key provincial ministries, the ministry has developed and maintains the B.C. Foreign Animal Disease Emergency Support Plan (FADES) that guides the response to FAD incidents in the province.

• 2019 B.C. FADES plan (PDF, 6MB)
• 2019 B.C. FADES annexes (PDF, 1.8MB)
• CFIA animal diseases