Our main role right now is, again, supporting sheltering. Depending on the situation, not every population requires shelter. Some people will go to family and friends who are supporting them. It's that presence and that training in terms of that side.
What's been new during COVID was to provide support on the health side. This is where the military was asked to intervene. That was everything from vaccinations to the ICU nurses we deployed to our field hospitals that we built for international. We deployed four field hospitals, so we have a number of capacities there. Then, of course, we helped with the quarantine of Canadians and different situations.
We have an expandable capacity and we have a present capacity, but it's looking at what the risks are. In terms of our role, we're seeing the need to better prepare local communities in terms of what they're going to be facing. There's a need to better prepare Canadians in terms of the risks. There's a need for better intervening and having the systems to support them in terms of evacuations and whatnot, and better helping with the recovery, the mitigation and the early warning systems, etc. The Red Cross is involved very much on the people side.
Part of the conversation here has been about the boots on the ground and heavy machinery, which we're not involved in. However, our experience has been that there is often local capacity in the private sector. To give you an example, when we're talking about Manitoba a few years ago, we chartered over 250 small planes to support the evacuation of over 10,000 first nation members of different communities in the north.
We have the logistical capacity to use that, but in order to use the private sector, you need to understand what the risks are. You need to organize your inventory of capacities and you need to have them ready. The challenge is when you do that—