‘Not a question of if’: Sask. releases its mass fatality plan

The Saskatchewan Coroners Service is releasing its first mass fatality plan, a plan created thanks to recommendations spurred by the Humboldt Broncos bus crash.

In 2018, Clive Weighill released his review of the province’s coroners service, which included 44 recommendations. Soon after, he became the province’s chief coroner and had a hand in creating the plan. 

Weighill said he made it a priority. 

“It’s not a question of if another incident will happen, it’s when. And unfortunately, we know with life, things don’t always go as we want and we have to be prepared for a mass fatality incident,” said Weighill. 

Weighill was in the middle of the review when the bus crash happened in April of 2018. He said it raised the fact the province didn’t have a mass fatality plan. 

The plan was finished in 2019 and was released publicly to 980 CJME this January. The plan hasn’t needed to be used yet. 

In its pages, the plan lays out how all the agencies that would respond to an emergency will work together, what the command structure would be, and which service does what. 

“I really think it has got us really well-prepared for an incident that will happen. Hopefully it never does, but we’re certainly in a better place than we were a few years ago,” said Weighill.

The kinds of incidents the plan could be used for are varied, including extreme weather events, structural collapses, bombs, and biological agent exposure. 

Weighill said the plan is based on an incident command model, which most first responders are trained on. 

“(It) puts somebody at the scene that’s in charge that’s managing the scene and then gives that person support for different various tasks that have to be done at the scene,” said Weighill.

Memorial for Humboldt Broncos bus tragedy, April 2018. (Chris Vandenbreekel/650 CKOM)

When the Broncos bus crash happened, Weighill said the coroner and assistant were trying to do everything at once. 

“They were trying to liaison with the other command structure there, they were trying to liaison with head office, they were (liaising) trying to get transport (and) trying to find a morgue,” Weighill said.

“Now, within this plan, you would have one in-charge coroner that would go there that would liaison with the other commanders, police, fire, EMS etc. And then we would send support people so that that in-charge coroner could focus on the scene and would get the support that they need.”

Had Saskatchewan had a mass fatality plan in 2018, Weighill said the crash situation could have been more co-ordinated. 

The plan is only about 15 pages long, quite a bit shorter than those of Alberta (which is 46 pages long) and B.C. (48 pages). 

Weighill said that was a choice he made so the document would be more easily taught and used. 

“A lot of times when you have a very detailed plan, it sits on a shelf and people aren’t familiar with it. We tried to come up with a very high-level plan that would give guidance to our coroners at the scene to get them going in the proper direction,” said Weighill. 

Eric Kennedy is an assistant professor of disaster and emergency management at York University in Toronto. He agrees shorter plans can have that as a positive, but he said there are also positives to having a more-detailed plan with clear guidance. 

Kennedy said more-detailed plans like Saskatchewan’s western neighbours have more specificity around what steps happen in what order and what procedures they need to follow. 

“So if we need to identify victims, here are the steps we’re going to follow. If we need to secure a scene, here are the steps we’re going to follow. If we need to even do something like set up a reception or receiving venue for family and friends and loved ones, here’s how we’re going to go through that process,” said Kennedy. 

In situations where there’s a shorter plan, Kennedy said an agency could have other things, like checklists, that are separate but can act as a supplement. 

In the aftermath of the Broncos bus crash, two of the victims were misidentified. In a review of the crash in 2019, Weighill’s office urged a review of procedures identifying the deceased as part of the suggestion to create this plan.

That report also recommended the province’s health authority review its policy in regards to the identification of people after “a mass casualty/fatality event.”

Weighill said he doesn’t think the current plan would have changed that because the survivors were taken from the scene before the coroners arrived and some identification was done through the hospitals. 

Saskatchewan’s mass fatality plan, underneath victim identification, only says: “An identification committee would normally be established as multiple agencies may be involved in identification.”

Kennedy said in creating a plan, he would want to look at any past incidents and try to learn from what happened there. With that in mind, he said this current plan could stand to have more detail and specificity in victim identification. 

“So does this plan have a really clear strategy for how we’re going to avoid those events going further? Does it provide enough detail to avoid those kinds of situations in the future?” said Kennedy.

Kennedy said what does stand out to him in Saskatchewan’s plan is that roles have been explicitly articulated. 

“A thing that I really like in this plan is how clearly they’ve laid out who is responsible for doing what – that kind of clarity is going to prove useful in an emergency event,” said Kennedy.

Kennedy said writing a plan is one thing but the implementation is also important. He said even a great plan can go wrong if it’s finished, put on a shelf and then never touched again. 

“The best-laid plans sometimes get tested and broken apart in the context of an emergency, and so making sure that we are pushing them in training and drills, making sure that we’re taking this plan, bringing together all the stakeholders that are listed in it, and doing a mock mass-fatality event to test it – what works and what doesn’t and what changes we need to make – that’s where the rubber hits the road,” said Kennedy. 

Weighill said stakeholders have copies of the plan and he has given presentations on it, coroners’ staff have been trained on the plan twice and full-time staff have gone to incident command training with the RCMP.

Overall, Kennedy commends the fact the coroners service now has a plan, saying there are several jurisdictions in the country that don’t have one. 

“I think COVID has reminded us of the importance of good plans and making sure that we’re thinking ahead about the events that could occur and what the next step is,” said Kennedy.