Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part guest comment from Don Jaque, former publisher of the Slave River Journal and Northern Journal newspapers based in Fort Smith. Part two will appear next week.
Now is a really bad time to be holding any kind of formal public inquiry into the handling of the wildfire that threatened Kakisa and Hay River and almost destroyed Enterprise last fall. A big exercise like that would be a huge distraction. We need to be focused on the upcoming fire season, which could be as bad, or worse. We need to get ready.
Indeed, none of our communities are adequately prepared to deal with a threatening wildfire. The real problem now — what is needed far more than a public inquiry — is fire preparedness. Please consider this:
— Few, if any NWT community has a proper evacuation plan, certainly not one that has been sanctioned and distributed to the population. What is needed is a plan with exit routes and scenarios and options for where to go when fire threatens, including designated mass muster points far from the community along with provisions and solutions for water and shelter for those most vulnerable;
— Few, if any community, has a proper EMO that is well-led and trained;
— Few communities have an effective means of communicating, especially for warning their populations. (Sorry folks, social media is a poor solution);
— Few, if any, have participated in training or education for leaders and for the population, including mock disaster simulations. Nothing is being done really, beyond the suggestion to pack an emergency kit. How naive is that?
All that should be addressed right now with community meetings and training. We have only a few months left. The Department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) should be acting as a facilitator. That fact it isn’t — not even present in all this — is unacceptable. If a fraction of the effort, organization and money MACA spends on sport and recreation were focused on emergency preparedness, our communities would be much better off.
It is not just MACA intransigence that is the issue. The old Department of Environment and Natural Resources (now Environment and Climate Change) has been as complicit in its inaction over time. Its fire abatement programs for communities are pathetic. Every community needs fire breaks. Every community needs assistance and consultation. We live in the Boreal forest. Wildfires are our disaster waiting to happen.
But blaming government inaction gets us nowhere. In fact that may be a source of our problems. Government, by nature, is reactive, not proactive. We know better than to expect solutions to flow from the GNWT, burdened as it is with bureaucracy, when quick action and new creative solutions are needed. We, the leadership and citizens of each community, need to take the lead and do the job ourselves. Only then will government action follow. That is the way it works.
Consider Fort Resolution, where their MLA, Richard Edjericon, recently stood in the legislature and described their dire situation. With no fire department, their community is vulnerable and defenseless against wildfires. Sorry, folks, but no one is going to suddenly provide Fort Resolution with a fire department. The GNWT is certainly not going to show up with a solution. It just does not happen that way.
The people there have to get their act together now and formulate their own defenses. That community has smart, capable people who know their situation better than anyone else. They have to set up some kind of workable EMO with a good leader and chain of command. They need to assess points of vulnerability around the perimeter of their community, where a fire might come from and figure out what it might do. They need to analyze evacuation routes and potential community muster points. They need to assess and marshal all the resources they have to work with. They have to take the initiative. Most of that is common sense. Importantly, they need to start having community meetings. Right away.
It’s not just Fort Resolution that must act. Every community is the same by degree. Local meetings need to be held in all communities — starting as soon as possible — to engage the population and create awareness.
But what of all the angry and frustrated people out there? That has to be dealt with too. A reason for that, I say, is our dependency on the government for all the answers and solutions. We have ceased to think for ourselves. We need to get our act together and get things going as a community, in every community.
Those angry people, many of whom have worthwhile contributions, have to become part of the local partnership that is organizing, marshaling resources and preparing for the threat from wildfires such that we work together, united. Otherwise, the next time we are faced with a fire threat or evacuation, mayhem will ensue. The population has to be part of the solution otherwise, it will be part of the problem.