When a critical incident unfolds — an active shooter, a mass casualty event, a major public safety emergency — the comm centre becomes the operational hub. Dispatch is managing responder coordination. But there is a parallel challenge that broadcast alert tools were not built to solve: getting verified, real-time, location-specific information to the public while the incident is still active. Where is it happening. Where to avoid. Where to go. Whether the threat is contained.
During Manitoba's 2025 wildfire emergency, the largest evacuation in provincial history, displacing over 30,000 residents across a vast and complex geography, the Manitoba Emergency Management Organization stood up MB Ready, a province-wide emergency public information platform, in 36 hours during an active state of emergency. What that deployment revealed was a coordination gap that exists across emergency types: the information that needs to reach the public in real time is different from what dispatch is managing, and most jurisdictions have no infrastructure to bridge that gap quickly, accurately, and from a single authoritative source.
The Manitoba deployment demonstrated what closing that gap looks like in practice, enabling EOCs to push verified, location-specific public information in real time across any emergency type, while comm centres stay focused on dispatch. This session draws on the Manitoba deployment to examine what that coordination layer looks like in practice, what it took to stand it up under pressure, and what it means for the relationship between comm centres, EOCs, and the communities they serve.
The question for this audience is whether that coordination layer exists in your jurisdiction before your next critical incident.