Since the province centralized the system in 2021, mayors and emergency services officials like fire chiefs say Address verification takes time or causes errors since agents do not live in calling regions.

Our community is large and includes several rural communities where street names are not accuratesays Wood Buffalo Mayor Sandy Bowman, who hoped the PwC report would reinforce the arguments of municipalities that have opposed centralization for years.

For the whole system Address verification took less time, reaching the goal of 90 percent verification in less than 60 secondscloses the report adding that The frequency of location errors has decreased since the integration of the emergency call center.

gold the report released on Mondaycloses that too Address verification in rural and remote areas took longer than the provincial averagei.e. between 50 and 79 seconds in 2021.

According to one of the 45 recommendations, Alberta Health Services should continue to improve its address verification procedures Reducing inequalities (e.g. in remote First Nations and Métis communities).

Sandy Bowman believes the only thing that can solve the slowness of the verification process is a local emergency dispatcher.

Bugs more common in rural areas

Address errors are more common in rural areas also concludes the report.

Paul Spring, from the foundation local herohas been conducting air medical evacuations in the Wood Buffalo area since 1986. He says he finds the helicopter mission takes longer since the dispatch system changed.

According to him, ambulances have been dispatched to locations only accessible by SUVs, although on a map they appear a few miles from downtown Fort McMurray.

In these situations, knowledge of the region provides the information needed to broadcast [le bon moyen de transport] he said.

He also believes that having a local shipping center in Fort McMurray would reduce address errors.

Red Deer’s chief of emergency services, Ken McMullen, doesn’t think the province will reverse its decision, although he is surprised that the report concludes that centralization is a good model: We see delays.

I think we can only watch and watch [la situation]says Ken McMullen.

For their part, the report’s authors, consultants to PwC, explain that Alberta Health Services is in the process of updating the mapping of rural and remote areas to correct address errors.

With information from Jamie Malbeuf