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It was around 7 a.m. on a Thursday in late June, 2013, when Ivan Kusal, director of risk management at Telus Corp., got a call from the City of Calgary about the rising floodwaters that were threatening parts of southern Alberta.

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“There was heavy rainfall in the mountains and things were starting to flood in Canmore and we knew that it would eventually hit Calgary,” Kusal says, recalling the first days of what became one of Canada’s most expensive natural disasters.

Calgary’s Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) had kicked into high gear, reaching out to a number of city agencies and key private companies handling critical infrastructure, including utility providers Enmax Corp. and Atco Gas, and telecom companies such as Telus.

“Our role during a major disaster is to ensure that we’re protecting or focusing recovery where necessary on that critical infrastructure, especially when it’s compromising emergency services,” Kusal says.

During the Calgary floods, that meant sending portable generators and cell towers to emergency and evacuation centres, remaining in constant communication with the Calgary Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) while also looking after its own customers who had experienced outages.

“We try to embed ourselves or have direct contact with the city’s Emergency Operations Centre so that we understand what their needs are,” Kusal says.

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Telus is one of a handful of private Canadian companies called upon to work with cities and municipalities in times of crisis, holding one of the 64 assigned seats at Calgary’s state-of-the art EOC, which is central command when the city has a large-scale emergency.

The paralyzing snowstorm that hit the Buffalo, NY area in late November is still top of mind, but north of the border, whether it’s the Calgary floods, last winter’s ice storm in Central Canada, or the deadly train derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in July, 2013, emergencies can find public and private organizations suddenly thrust together both during and after the events.

The co-ordination efforts include private company rivals, who must work together and with governments during a crisis.

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That’s why the Canadian Telecom Emergency Preparedness Association was formed in 2000, to help build a network of emergency planners in the industry to share information in the event of a disaster.

“We are all competing against each other, but at the same time we are also preparing and ensuring we can respond together during an emergency,” says Marc Duchesne, Bell’s vice-president of corporate security and responsibility.

The federal government has a National Cross-Sector Forum, which includes governments and private companies in sectors such as energy and utilities, finance, food and transportation to ensure critical infrastructure remains resilient, especially during emergencies.

Still, there are challenges of bringing together public and private companies and competitors. Communication can be a hurdle, experts say, especially when combining different organization and management styles during high-stress situations such as a fire, storm or flood.

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“It can be really tough for a business to come in,” says CEMA deputy chief Tom Sampson. “We say [to our partners] when you come in with us, we all work together. That can be hard on a company … but we do it to ensure we’re all kicking with one foot … We can bring things online faster if we’re all working together.”

While many people see essential services as just police, fire and ambulance, Sampson believes it’s critical to include power, transportation, telecom and other private companies. He also advocates including business and other organizations whose members will likely be affected by a disaster into the emergency planning discussions.

“There are a great number of interdependencies,” Sampson says.

As an example, he cites the fire at the downtown Calgary headquarters of Shaw Communications in July, 2012, which knocked out phone and Internet service across a number of organizations. That impacted everything from radio station broadcasts to hospital operations, forcing doctors across the province to cancel surgeries.

TODD KOROL/REUTERS

“We have such an incredible reliance on technology and the predominance of our technology sits in our private companies' hands,” Sampson says.

The City of Toronto says it holds regular discussions with private sector companies and organizations about how to work together during a crisis, and it runs regular training exercises to prepare for potential emergencies ranging from storms to train derailments.

Some of the stakeholders include the downtown financial district and building owners, which helped when managing power outages during last year’s ice storm, says Loretta Chandler, director of the City of Toronto’s Office of Emergency Management.

“The more you plan together for an event the better, and generally, things work better when you have some type of prior relationship,” Chandler says.

“We need each other. We’re all part of the recovery … There are strong linkages between the public and private sector in times of (crisis).”

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