City of Prince Rupert Closes Emergency Operations Centre, suspends Local State of Emergency

Following the guidance of the Province of British Columbia from this morning, the City of Prince Rupert has acted on the Provincial order to suspend all Local States of Emergency, making the local  announcement through City of Prince Rupert website.

As part of the brief statement, the City announced the closure of its Emergency Operations Centre which was put into place on Monday evening, adding that the City will focus on business continuity in order to maintain essential service levels.

As we outlined earlier today, the Provincial Government struck down all current Local State of Emergency orders across the province, stating a desire to ensure that the guidelines from Doctor Bonnie Henry, the Public Health Officer of British Columbia remained as the guiding document for residents of the province to follow.

With the announcement, the Province will now operate solely under the Provincial State of Emergency which was declared on March 18th.

The Orders and Notices of the Public Health Officer are the orders that all British Columbians will need to follow, you can review those orders here.

During this mornings information presentation, Solicitor General Mike Farnworth announced that the Province would be asking local governments to identify and make available any publicly owned facilities that could be used for pandemic response, including facilities for self isolation, medical care and testing.

The brief website announcement is the only official communication on the provincial decision to be relayed by the City, or Council membership to this point.

There has been no mention of the provincial order, which was issued shortly after 9:30 AM, yet to be delivered through the City's Social Media stream, Civic twitter feed, or through the Facebook page of Mayor Lee Brain.

The details towards today's Provincial announcement, with more background on the measures now in place can be found here.

You can review the list of past announcements from the Provincial and Federal governments here, while our archive of those local announcements from the North Coast can be explored here.