Five recommendations have come out of a lessons learned report issued nearly a year after last summer’s Bearspaw South water feeder main rupture.

The document will be presented at the April 29 Regular Meeting of Calgary city council and outlines a series of areas where improvements can be made to the City of Calgary’s emergency response.

In June 2024, a massive water feeder main break put the City of Calgary in a nearly four-month emergency, with construction, community outreach, and lengthy water rationing around the city and surrounding regional water partners. It prompted a third-party investigation into the cause and the response.

The 11-page report describes the overarching response and highlights some successes in the city’s actions. It pointed to overall collaboration in the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) and the Water Tactical Operations Centre (H2OC), along with messaging being supported by Calgary city council.

They also applauded the efforts of local partners, particularly engineering firms and construction contractors, who helped support the dozens of city staff who were working non-standard work schedules for more than three months.

The City of Calgary report also cited the availability of subject matter experts to quickly respond to the water main break and come up with innovative solutions was crucial to the response’s success.

“The operational and engineering feats to innovate and move water in new ways the system was not designed for to critical areas of the drinking water distribution system were instrumental to maintaining safe, potable water supply to all customers,” the report read.

The information for the report was collected from surveys and debriefs with staff and agency members.  

“Although the Bearspaw South Feeder Main break was a significant and complex response with many challenges, it highlighted the resilience of our city, region and community,” the report’s conclusion read.

“The City was successful in providing continued essential water services and the community came together to meet the extraordinary challenge we faced. The City’s ability to quickly and effectively open both its EOC to coordinate the larger overall emergency and its H2OC to coordinate the restoration of services is a testament to The City’s preparedness and its capacity to manage and respond to emergencies.”

Communication, staffing are areas of improvement

While the report does see some success in the communication to Calgarians, it did note incomplete information early on in the event, and later in relaying the scale and nature of the event to citizens.

“As the event progressed and the impacts became apparent, messaging needed to change; this negatively impacted the public trust of citizens who felt more information should have been given,” the report read.

Ward 1 Coun. Sonya Sharp said that during last year’s water crisis, everyone worked hard to make sure that information was out there and that water issues were being handled. Still, she said she met with administration last week and said that those in charge of the situation need to be delivering the message.

Sharp said there was often a sense of confusion in the messaging with repetitive social media posts, water consumption restrictions, and then it happened again when construction started.

“Calgarians in general respond better to experts than politicians in times of crisis,” she told LWC.

“When there is a crisis and those in charge need to step up and deliver the message. When we see the fires happen, yes, we have politicians come out, say one or two things, then you pass it along to those who are taking charge. That is why they’re there. I kind of made sure they understood that.”

Coun. Sharp does have a notice of motion also coming to Calgary city council this week, around customer service standards for water disruptions, that she believes tie into this.

“When things happen in your neighbourhood, you need to be made aware of it, and you can’t always log on to Calgary.ca to watch a presser,” she said.

The report provided five recommendations, including updating operational processes at both the EOC and the H2OC and a Municipal Emergency Plan update to clarify roles and responsibilities for specific positions.  It also talks about clearer communications support and development of the crisis communications team, and the development of additional psychological safety and wellness initiatives for employees both before, during and after an event.

Sharp said the one improvement area the report didn’t cover was the speed at which decisions are made. She said there’s a layer of bureaucracy that requires multiple calls before a decision is made.

“It takes too long to get people where they need to be, and that is missing in this report, and they don’t want to talk about it,” Sharp said.

“The decision makers need to make decisions, and sometimes those decision makers aren’t the people at the top. They are the people, maybe a couple of layers down, when, in a time of crisis, they automatically should get the autonomy to make decisions.”