Colin Dacre

I have so much appreciation for the people who are relaying accounts of what happened in Wainwright out to the broader public. I have to say though, Canadian government comms culture is atrocious. There should be some kind of report from official sources. We basically got "There's been a horrible tragedy, don't speculate" from the government with very little else said a day later. The whole country is still trying to figure out just how big of a disaster this is. Not because Canadians are morbidly hungering for infotainment, but because they are concerned about the lives lost and people hurt, and are trying to make sense of it. The average person understands very well that the full summary of events and casualty count is not going to be available until much, much later. And that when it comes to identifying individuals injured or lost, it is no question that family notification comes first. But that does not preclude officials from providing their basic understanding of what happened, and ballpark figures when it comes to casualties. Is the number of people with life-threatening burns in the hundreds or the dozens? How about deaths? Missing? It also seems that "something hit gas infrastructure" and "fire blew into a location on base where people were present" are two prevalent explanations coming out of the grapevine; if soldiers are talking about it in their networks, then officials are getting briefed on it, too. There doesn't need to be a scientific level of precision in the intel before going to the public; "At this time it is believed ...." does suffice, and is especially welcome if it dispels any erroneous information that's floating around. Absent official lines of communication, all we have is what can be gleaned from Facebook comments of locals, chatter that makes its way to the public through CAF/first responder networks, eyewitness accounts from people in the area, etc. And this is how you get more rumourmongering than there otherwise would have been, which I believe is worse for a nation that is trying to appropriately mourn a tragedy. It shouldn't have to be that way.