Regional emergency response

In the critical hours following a crisis situation, while local and provincial response agencies are dealing with the immediate and urgent needs of the municipality, residents in affected communities need to be prepared to help themselves and to assist their neighbours, who may have been seriously impacted by the event.

Joint Emergency Management (JEM) is a concept developed by the Halifax Regional Municipality’s Emergency Management Office (EMO), to allow community organizations to prepare for, and respond quickly to, a wide range of emergencies.

JEM teams are all community volunteers. In times of crises, EMO will activate JEM Support Centres (JSC) to coordinate humanitarian response to the JEM coverage area. These centres are a facility where trained individuals can meet to provide local input to the Emergency Operations Centre, located in Dartmouth.

We are currently recruiting JEM teams for the urban parts of our municipality. Please call 902-490-4213 for more information

There are five such JEMs in the municipality:

• Eastern Shore
• Musquodoboit Valley
• Riverlake and District
• Sheet Harbour and area
• Western Region

 When are JEM meetings?

Every region’s JEM meets at a different time. Drop-ins are welcome and encouraged.

Eastern Shore: 7 to 8:30 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month at the Search and Rescue building at #15688, Hwy 7, Head of Chezzetcook.

Musquodoboit Valley: 7 p.m. on the last Monday of each month upstairs in the Middle Musquodoboit Fire Station.

Riverlake: 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month at Fire Station 45, 1359 Fall River Road in Fall River.

Sheet Harbour: 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. on the third Tuesday of each month in the upstairs office at the Sheet Harbour Fire Station or the Eastern Shore Memorial Hospital.

Western Region: 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month at the Hatchet Lake Fire Station, 2101 Prospect Rd, Hatchet Lake.

Mainland North  6:30 pm on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Canada Games Centre,  26 Thomas Raddall Drive  Community Centre of Arts and Crafts Room

Auxiliary Telecommunications Service

The Auxiliary Telecommunications Services (ATS) provides EMO with trained telecommunications operators in support of, or to augment, telecommunications systems normally used by responding agencies when regular systems become damaged or overloaded by an emergency incident or a disaster.

The ATS concept exists to:

• train volunteers to handle important message traffic in a uniform and professional manner
• establish a call-out system to rapidly deploy telecommunications support assets when activated by EMO
• maintain, test, and utilize parallel telecommunications systems.
• support JEM sites and comfort centres as required
• participate in telecommunications exercises in order to enhance operator skills and to test redundant systems
• provide or augment telecommunications at incident, or other sites as directed