It's called Black Friday in Edmonton after a massive tornado ripped across the city, 25 years ago today leaving 27 people dead in its destructive path.

The memory has some posing the question, "how would we respond if something like that were to happen in Saskatoon."

Saskatoon's emergency services co-ordinator said the city has an escalating approach in responding to disasters.

"We don't have our civic leaders drop everything and go to our operations centre just because something could be happening," said Ray Unrau.

Instead, the first moments of a potential disaster are spent collecting information and assessing to determine what should happen next. That's when the response to an emergency situation is at level one and two.

"And if that step is serious enough, we go to a level three alert and we actually go and populate the EOC," Unrau said.

The centre would act as the place for communications to flow from and for important decisions to be made.

In the 30 years he's been with the city's Emergency Services Department, he has yet to see the Emergency Operations Centre activated, Unrau said.

But he doesn't want that to downplay the need to be prepared.

ccarr@rawlco.com

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