The City of Regina’s emergency response services and Area 6 pipeline cooperative held a training exercise to simulate an emergency on the pipeline corridor on Thursday, Oct. 22. The training exercise took place on the pipeline corridor between The Winston Knoll Collegiate and Michael A. Riffel Catholic High School in Regina.
“Safety and security are core values at City of Regina because they are crucial to success. Practice exercises allow us to look at our program, see how we respond, how emergency response partners are ready to handle any situation,” said Gerard Kay, deputy chief of the City of Regina’s public safety, planning and prevention division.
Pipelines Area 6 is not only for Regina area; it is part of Western Canada. There are many pipeline corridors across Regina and it is very important to take emergency service training exercise, Kay said.
“Near Riffel high School, there are multiple pipelines on the ground and so therefore to able to identify product and that way pipeline companies can identify their products and take action to reduce and eliminate the goods coming through the pipelines,” he explained.
Regina Police Services, Regina Fire and Protective Services, and companies that deal with the pipelines are partnered with this training exercise. This kind of exercise happens only twice a year and no more exercise will be held this year, Kay said.
“We have a plan to deal with the agents and we do exercises on a periodical basis then our workers (and) first responders know how to deal with real life situations,” he said.
People in the neighborhood were not contacted about this event, just industry-based people.
Regina pipeline activist Florence Stratton was not worried about this training exercise. “I am not concerned about these pipelines. (The) only pipelines that bother me (are) from Alberta to Saskatchewan to B.C.,” she said.
“We appreciate for the public support to allow us to do this exercise,” Kay said.