RCMP K-Div Real Time Operations Centre
EDMONTON — Alberta RCMP’s Real Time Operations Centre is increasingly turning what once could take hours of police co-ordination into a response measured in minutes.
Harvard Media reconnected with RTOC one year after first visiting the command centre to see how its role has evolved, and found the unit continuing to grow while supporting officers and communities across Alberta.
Over the past year, RTOC has supported 17,308 incidents involving general-duty RCMP members across the province, acting as a centralized command centre that can bring supervisors, specialized units and other resources into an unfolding event almost immediately.
A tornado this past summer and the RCMP response illustrates how this nerve centre makes a difference in the lives of both officers and the public.
As calls began coming in about collapsed structures and damaged trailers at a provincial campground, RTOC began coordinating available officers and specialized resources. Police dog services and members from surrounding areas were mobilized while officers arriving at the scene began assessing injuries and the extent of the damage.
RTOC helped establish an on-site command post, integrated communications among police, fire and EMS and began the process of activating the RCMP’s Disaster Emergency Operations Centre.
Within two hours of the initial call, the emergency operations centre was operating and more than 20 RCMP members were either at the scene or travelling to it.
The centre also reached outside the RCMP for aerial resources. Saskatchewan provided a high-altitude surveillance aircraft while Edmonton police sent a helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft to help search the affected area.
Within roughly four hours, officials had compiled a list of people and occupied campsites and narrowed the search to two people who remained unaccounted for. Both were later located at a nearby hospital.
Staff Sgt. Alan Erickson, a risk manager with RTOC, said the centralized response is markedly different from the way major incidents could once unfold.
In previous years, he said, an officer arriving at the scene might first have to contact a supervisor, who would then contact district officials as information and requests for resources moved through the chain.
“You’d be looking at, as it trickles through, probably 12 hours before you’d be activating any kind of significant coordination of events or resources for something of that nature,” Erickson said.
He said RTOC’s real-time awareness of an incident, knowledge of available resources and established procedures such as its mass-casualty playbook allow those resources to be coordinated much more quickly.
The performance offers a contemporary measure of the “force multiplier” role RTOC was designed to play.
When Harvard Media visited the centre one year ago, then-officer in charge Insp. Ryan Breitkreuz described RTOC as a force multiplier, giving officers across Alberta access to experienced supervisors, intelligence, technology and specialized resources without having to station those experts in every detachment.
A year later, the centre is handling more incidents and applying that model to major emergencies as they unfold.
During the Jasper wildfire evacuation, RTOC helped co-ordinate with agencies in Alberta and British Columbia as an estimated 40,000 people were moved west when routes to the south and east were cut off by fire.
Erickson said more than 25 officers were on their way to Jasper within about 30 minutes as the centre worked to co-ordinate the evacuation and protection of the community.
Those capabilities are also being used closer to Fort McMurray.
RTOC supported 125 events involving the Wood Buffalo RCMP detachment over the past 12 months. Insp. Chris Smiley, the centre’s officer in charge, said the number is lower than in some areas because Wood Buffalo is a large detachment with round-the-clock staffing and its own supervisors.
The calls included support for pursuits, emergency response teams, major crimes investigations, collision analysts and other specialized resources.
RTOC also became involved when a sudden spring snowstorm stranded motorists along Highway 63.
Erickson said the centre worked with Wood Buffalo RCMP as calls came in from stranded motorists, relaying information and helping prioritize people who needed assistance while officers and other responders waited for conditions to become safe enough to move along the highway.
The centre was also able to provide information to stranded drivers, including advice to remain with their vehicles, conserve fuel and, where possible, connect with people in other vehicles while emergency crews organized a systematic response.
Erickson said RTOC has become increasingly effective at managing major incidents while also reviewing each response afterward for lessons that can improve the next one.
“We have been very effective at managing the most high-risk significant events in the province,” Erickson said, adding the centre has also become effective at debriefing incidents afterward to identify where its response can be refined.
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