Evacuees from Yellowknife make their way along Highway 3 at the edge of a burned forest on their way into Fort Providence, NWT, on Aug. 17.Bill Braden/The Canadian Press
Some essential workers are returning to Yellowknife over the next two days to reopen critical services, such as pharmacies and grocery stores, before thousands of people are allowed to head home after three weeks under a wildfire evacuation order.
Roughly 20,000 residents from the Northwest Territories’ capital and the nearby First Nation communities of Ndılǫ and Dettah can return beginning noon on Wednesday, subject to the threat of ever-evolving wildfires. They were ordered to evacuate on Aug. 16 when flames roared about 17 kilometres from the municipal boundary.
Fire burning along the territory’s highways delayed efforts to bring critical workers home last week, save for health workers who arrived by plane because they needed more time to prepare for the influx of residents. The majority of essential workers are now expected to come back on Monday and Tuesday to restore transportation, utilities, fuel and other needs for essential staff and municipal services.
But that doesn’t mean life will return to normal, Yellowknife Mayor Rebecca Alty warned in an interview with The Globe and Mail on Sunday.
“It’s going to be bare-bones,” she said. The hospital will need about a month to return to its usual capacity, the mayor added, and lineups at grocery stores will be lengthy with limited staff. “You know, when you come back Wednesday at noon, the arena isn’t going to be open for hockey practice. It’s going to be just water, sewer, waste.”
Residents who embark on the road home, by plane or car, are among the thousands who have been forced to flee their homes during an unprecedented wildfire season in Canada.
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And some in parts of the country won’t have homes to return to after fire incinerated their properties. Nearly 15,240,000 hectares of land has been burned, which is more than two times the size of New Brunswick and almost five times more than the 10-year average.
It is the worst season on record in Canada and weeks still remain until the wildfire threat cools into the fall.
Provinces and territories threatened by the wind-fuelled fires have had to rely on reinforcements from other parts of Canada, the Canadian Armed Forces, and foreign firefighters from countries such as South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to keep up the fight. Roughly 255 fires are still burning out of control across the country.
In Yellowknife, the two fires that threatened the community are now considered as “being held,” which means the blazes are not expected to spread beyond their current boundaries. Mike Westwick, a spokesperson with the territorial fire service, said the current focus is to bring in firefighters for what he calls “mop-up” duty to extinguish any glowing embers or other fire residue left behind.
“You can think of it like a large-scale, landscape-level version of like soaking, stirring and soaking a campfire. That’s what mop-up crews do,” he said. Mr. Westwick urged people returning to Yellowknife to be cautious of fire personnel working along the highways and in fire hot spots as they drive up Highways 1 and 3.
Ms. Alty did not know how many essential workers are set to return home in total and the Government of the Northwest Territories did not respond to requests for comment, including on a question about how many people have preregistered to be flown home.
There remain some communities in the Northwest Territories that don’t have a clear end in sight, including NWT’s second-largest community of Hay River across Great Slave Lake from Yellowknife, the nearby West Point First Nation and Fort Smith, which hugs the Alberta boundary.
Hot, dry weather and gusting wind pushed the fire threatening Hay River within 500 metres of the community hospital on Saturday, Mr. Westwick said, adding that embers were running across the town’s main road, Highway 2, which remains closed.
Firefighters spent the day “aggressively attacking” the blaze with 10 tankers and a fleet of airplanes, he said. The crew was able to defend the area, and much-needed rainfall has helped choke wildfire activity, but he warned that they aren’t out of the woods yet. The area is sitting at a drought code of 800. Anything above 340 is considered extreme.
“That means that the fire is burning deeper into the ground in what we call the duff layer,” Mr. Westwick said. This is where decomposing forest fuel sits, which is highly flammable and can store a lot of heat.
“Basically, when it dries out here, it’s going to flare back up,” he said. “But the key objective going forward is to start working in from the perimeter of the fire that’s close to the community here, dig up that fuel, extinguish what’s there – what’s called blacklining – and that starts building a bit of a protective layer, so to speak.”