State of Emergency Declared in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories Due to Surrounding Wildfires
Canada's northernmost territory is inundated with wildfires setting the stage for an evacuation of Yellowknife
The City of Yellowknife declared a state of emergency for the local area due to wildfires surrounding the city on Monday night.
The city council declaration stated that the emergency measures could include taking over the use of vehicles or property to respond to the emergency, calling for an evacuation, or authorizing qualified people to provide services or assistance in emergency responses.
Yellowknife city manager Sheila Bassi-Kellet said during an emergency city council meeting the municipality is monitoring nearby wildfires with technical assistance from Environment and Climate Change Canada, as reported by globalnews.ca.
“We’re going to continue to monitor that, to gauge at what point it does make sense for us to say Yellowknifers in certain areas of the community that may be deemed to be at risk based on projected fire behaviour ,” she said in the meeting.
She added that the state of local emergency declared Monday enables the community to mobilize as much equipment as possible.
On Sunday, strong winds fanned fast-moving flames through a firebreak which came within 30 kilometres of the territorial capital. The Behchokǫ̀/Yellowknife fire was mapped at 136,109 hectares on Sunday.
Bassi-Kellet said if the fire breaches Boundary Creek, there could be an evacuation order for the rest of Highway 3 up to Yellowknife’s boundary.
“Weather conditions determine a lot … and certainly the winds yesterday were really quite frightening,” she said. “The situation is fluid based on [N.W.T. Fire’s] latest update.”
The air quality in the city is very smoky and residents have been instructed to make preparations to leave, although an evacuation order has not yet been issued.
The wildfires have disfigured communications infrastructure in the region, making the emergency response more complicated.
Hay River and Fort Providence, other towns located on the shores of Great Slave Lake, in addition to Fort Smith and other regional towns are without internet, long distance phone or cellular service due to a wildfire in the southern NWT, a spokesperson for telecommunications company Northwestel told Global News.
An evacuation order was issued for residents in Hay River, NWT earlier in the day, due to the risk of a wildfire that was approximately 60 kilometres away at the time and approaching the area quickly.
Evacuation orders were issued Saturday for Fort Smith, a town on the border of Alberta with a population of about 2,000, as well as for Smith’s Landing First Nation and the Alberta village of Fort Fitzgerald.
Fort Smith Mayor Fred Daniels said in a video posted online not long before the highway was closed down that its closure could be imminent, and that the last evacuation bus would leave the community at 2 p.m. local time.
“Thank you for the awesome evacuation. It went smoothly,” Daniels said, while also thanking firefighters, EMS and wildfire crews, as reported by globalnews.ca.
The town posted online that anyone remaining in the community should now shelter in place.
Highway 5 connects Fort Smith and the other evacuated communities with Hay River, near the south shore of Great Slave Lake, where many evacuees were being taken before that town was evacuated.
Several fires are burning in the vicinity but the ones that prompted the evacuation order for Fort Smith, according to an update issued by NWT Fire on Saturday evening, are the Wood Buffalo National Park wildfires.
Fires are spreading everywhere - Hawaii, the far north, everywhere.