Kevin Wallinger, who oversees emergency management for Vancouver, says officials expect to handle between 100,000 to 200,000 people every night during the 2010 Games. (CBC)

Emergency planners are considering every possibility from biological threats to a terrorist attack when putting together a blueprint for emergency response during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

Attention will be given to several areas in the city, including the Olympic Athletes Village, the Convention and Exhibition Centre and the two main venues: BC Place and GM Place, said Kevin Wallinger, director of emergency management for the City of Vancouver.

"What 9/11 did, it obviously changed the world. Whether it was airplanes that brought the [Twin] Towers down or an earthquake that brought the Towers down, the consequences remained the same, and that's [what] our role is, to manage the consequences of any type of event," Wallinger said.

He made the comments after addressing a conference of emergency professionals in Vancouver on Wednesday.

He said emergency response involves a massive logistical effort because of the number of people who will be present at various venues and events during a prolonged period of time.

"I'm not sure what the actual projections are, but we're probably looking at a 100,000 to 200,000 range on a nightly basis," Wallinger said.

'We have to make certain we have enough resources to deal with those potential situations.'— John Oakley, Integrated Public Safety Unit

Emergency planning for the Olympics is a matter of ramping up existing plans to take into account the thousands more people in the city in February of 2010, said John Oakley, director of the Integrated Public Safety Unit of the Provincial Emergency Program in B.C.

"If you have to evacuate a population for whatever reason, how do we take care of the people that are evacuated whether it be out of a motel, hotel or venue site?" Oakley said in an interview Wednesday.

"We'll have a number of large venues operating at the same time, that's sheer numbers, so we have to make certain we have enough resources to deal with those potential situations."

Keeping routes accessible is part of the city's Olympics transportation strategy, which was released on Tuesday.

More than 650 blocks of the city will be affected, from the elimination of parking all the way to a complete closure of routes for security reasons.

Overall responsibility for handling emergencies during the 2010 Olympics will rest with the Integrated Security Unit, a multi-agency group being spearheaded by the RCMP.

The need to liaise with the ISU has been the biggest change to how utility company Terasen handles emergency planning, said Joyce Wagenaar, the company's director of corporate communication.

"The key thing that we're doing is taking our plans that we exercise regularly and we're integrating those with others," she said.

"With key information that they have available, such as transportation routes and a variety of other pieces, the co-ordination is key."

With files from the Canadian Press