Thunder Bay Transits’ first involvement in a major evacuation of more than 1,300 Bombardier workers proved to be unprecedented, says the city transit manager.
Thunder Bay police evacuated employees from the plant last week after they received a tip about a possible bomb. Thunder Bay Transit responded to the threat as well and moved the approximately 1,300 workers away from the plant to the nearby Resolute Forest Products facility, formerly AbitibiBowater.
The move required the entire fleet of buses that resulted in transit services being shut down for about 45 minutes.
Transit Manager Brad Loroff said they needed to use 100 per cent of their capacity to be able to move that number of people in a short amount of time. Loroff said they have participated in evacuations that required buses before, but never to the same extent as the Bombardier evacuation.
“Thunder Bay Transit is part of the city’s emergency plan and on occasion when there is a need to evacuate people for an urgent need transit will get a call from dispatch,” Loroff said.
“It is a bit unprecedented and it’s something we’ve never done before. We’re obviously looking at what happened and if something of this scope and magnitude were to happen again what is the most efficient way for us to react to it.
“How can we be able to accommodate the evacuation request and maybe at the same time not have such an impact on the regular transit service. We`ll be looking at ways to improve our process as part of our debrief.”
Loroff said transit users were understanding of the situation, and added that they were thankful the evacuation happened during a period when not many people were using the bus.
