There are two major components to the Ministry of Natural Resources’ Emergency Management Program.
The first deals with hazards such as forest fires and floods. The Ministry of Natural Resources has specially trained staff to assist with many diverse actions when an emergency occurs, including the evacuation of communities and forest fire fighting.
The second component of the Ministry of Natural Resources’ Emergency Management Program involves the organizational resiliency or continuity of operations. It is always working behind the scenes to ensure that critical services are available to help when they are needed. 
Each of the hundreds of services that MNR offers on an everyday basis contributes to the continuation of MNR business. However, certain services have been designated as ‘time-critical services’ which means that in any emergency event, our priority is to maintain these services with minimal or no disruption.
The Ministry of Natural Resources has developed a Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP). The overall goal of this plan is to ensure those time-critical services and their related operations can be maintained, or resumed to a planned level, should an emergency event occur.
Examples of the time-critical services that require continuity plans, and that would have a direct impact on a community in need include:
- Surface Water Monitoring Centre (to ensure flood advisories and warnings are issued)
- Fire Suppression and Control Teams (to ensure forest fire fighters are available)
- District Emergency Response Teams (to assist communities during evacuations)
- Emergency Dam Operations (to maintain water levels in communities)
