Vancouver mayor confident city will be ready for first hot weekend of summer

The first spell of hot weather is upon us and Vancouver’s mayor says the city learned a lot from the deadly heat dome last year.

Environment Canada has issued a special weather statement for warmer temperatures, starting Friday through Tuesday.

It comes ahead of the one-year anniversary of B.C.’s deadly heat dome that left more than 600 British Columbians dead. The majority of the deaths were in seniors, or those with preexisting health conditions, between the end of June and early July when temperatures hit above 40 C along the south coast and even hotter in the Interior.

Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart says one of the lessons learned was to improve communications.

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“Communications is a core part of it so working with the province and the feds to make sure we can alert people if there is weather coming that they should be aware about,” he said.

“Main thing is working with the agencies across the city. Those folks that are working in single-room occupancy hotels, making sure that we’re as ready as we can be, but also constantly monitoring through the summer to make sure that we’ve got it right.”

Going into this first weekend of the summer, Stewart says he is confident the city will be ready.

“So we’ve been having constant briefings from our City Management Team. We learned a lot from last year’s tragedy. So this has been a top priority of our team at the city — working with the federal and provincial governments to make sure we’re ready for anything that comes our way this summer.”

Stewart says there has been a significant capital investment in cooling stations as well as water misters and portable fountains.

– With files from Rebecca Johnstone and Claire Fenton