Yah criticizing the RCMP or any emergency responder in this incident does absolutely nothing in my opinion. A tiny RCMP detachment was just faced with something that even a massively resourced operation like Vancouver PD or Toronto PD would find extremely challenging.
I feel so bad for those responders as within the first moment of this incident they were instantly overwhelmed. 3 adjacent structure fires in Vancouver would use at the very least 10-12 apparatus, a dedicated specialized command truck, a dedicated BCAS truck or two, BC Hydro staff amongst other things like effective radio dispatching, repeaters in place to make sure radios stay working etc. The volunteer firefighters that took on those fires had a sliver of the response capability of a major city and in my opinion are nothing short of heroes.
I also can't imagine the challenges faced by the RCMP as this seemed like it crossed jurisdictions and you have multiple agencies trying to communicate priorities. Incident command is not easy when you're working with one agency for even a small incident, add multiple agencies working together and that makes things extremely complicated.
The absolute last thing any of these responders need, imo, is to feel bad about what they did. Lessons can be learned from any emergency response scenario. But those people on the front lines did nothing wrong, they did their job, and thankfully they shot this monster down before he was able to inflict any more damage.
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