Optimum West

Challenge

• Tiny Kemano, B.C. - home to some 250 people - was B.C.’s last true company town. Since 1954, Kemano had existed to house workers and their families at the remote power generating station that supplies Alcan’s Kitimat smelter with the abundant hydroelectricity required to produce aluminum. By 1999, the costs of maintaining Kemano’s quality of life had become prohibitive. Kemano could not keep up with technological change - banks would not install ATMs in such an isolated location; internet access was problematic; Alcan provided high quality elementary education to Kemano’s children but they had to leave the community to attend high school. Closing Kemano Village was a difficult but necessary decision for Alcan. It was heartbreaking for the residents and the thousands of residents that had gone before them.
• The challenge: how to handle this end of a remarkable chapter of B.C.’s history and a chapter in the personal history of so many Alcan pioneering families in the most sensitive way possible?

Solution

• Optimum has been Alcan’s Agency of Record in B.C. since 1997. Instinctively, the company did all the right things right. Optimum supported Alcan in conceiving and executing plans designed to put Kemanoites first, to ensure relocation to jobs in Kitimat, to provide counseling for young people, to communicate with generations of former Kemano residents about the compelling reasons for change; and to make sure Kemano assets went to worthy causes.
• Then came the biggest challenge of all. An industrious local Fire Chief, recognizing that the houses in Kemano would have to be decommissioned, approached B.C.’s Office of the Fire Commissioner and suggested that this could be the firefighting training exercise of all time. They asked a company, already dealing with the grief of relocated residents, “Can we burn the houses down?”
• Optimum was called in to assess the risks and opportunities associated with the Fire Commissioner’s proposal. Together with Alcan and government agencies, we developed the Kemano Public Safety Iniative (KPSI), positioning it as the greatest legacy Kemano Village could leave B.C.
• Before proceeding with an important safety initiative, Kemano residents were consulted about their taste for it. Teachers at the local elementary school engaged the children in conversations about their tolerance for images of Kemano houses burning. All understood what this might mean in terms of saving lives.
• With Kemanoites firmly on board, Optimum designed a media relations program that targeted all B.C. communities sending firefighters to participate in the exercise, extolling the legacy that B.C.’s last company town was leaving to all B.C. communities.

Results

• Over the course of 2000 and 2001 (during which Alcan absorbed the cost of winterizing buildings slated for razing), more than 800 B.C. firefighters - most of them in volunteer positions - participated in multiple burns of Kemano houses to learn about fire progression and suppression.
  The National Research Council of Canada and various other scientific organizations used KPSI to add to their knowledge bases.
• The Fire Chief in charge of the exercise for B.C. quoted a new, local chief as saying, “I’ve had a terrible foreboding about ever having to send one of my brigades inside a house. But, after three days here, I know how; I know when; and I know when not to.”

Firefighters sharpen their skills through a unique training exercise in Kemano, BC.