Community-Based Professional Associations’ Support Towards Animal Farming Community’s Evacuation during the 2021 Pacific Northwest Floods in Fraser Valley, British Columbia (BC), Canada

The animal farming communities in the Fraser Valley were devastated by the 2021 Pacific Northwest floods. These communities, community-based professional associations (e.g., BC Dairy Association and BC Poultry Association), and government rescue teams were engaged in the evacuation. This study employs a phenomenological approach by examining these cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder engagements in evacuation decision-making to identify promising practices and areas for improvement. Through qualitative interviews of animal farm owners, community-based professional associations, and governmental emergency responders, this project discovers that during the decision-making stage of the disaster evacuation (1) at the grassroots level, the animal farmers’ long-term engagement with their natural, built, and social environments enabled them to develop the initiatives for evacuation strategies but lacked resources and equipment to facilitate their evacuation; (2) at the mezzo-level, community-based professional associations were equipped with specific knowledge, skills, and services to support the animal farmers’ evacuation but lacked the capacity of large-scale coordination; and (3) at the macro-level, the governmental emergency responders could swiftly coordinate different resources to support the evacuation in Fraser Valley, but did not comprehensive understand the animal farming communities’ characteristics. These three-level challenges enable the community-based professional associations to connect the local residents with governmental rescue teams to collaborate to use their strengths to improve their weaknesses and develop a community-driven evacuation plan. This cross-sectoral collaboration shed light on an innovative approach for effective emergency decision-making, facilitating a two-way communication approach so that community-based individual and collective expertise can be engaged in governmental emergency response efforts to enhance grassroots coping capacity. Broadly, the community-based professional associations’ contributions will inform disaster-specific political interventions for building resilience, especially in vulnerable rural farming communities.