Emergency response to deadly Lac du Bonnet wildfire to be reviewed, reeve says

When Glennda Gould fled her home in Manitoba's wildfire-stricken Lac du Bonnet area this week, it wasn't because she'd gotten a notification telling her to evacuate — it was because the smoke had finally gotten so bad she felt like she couldn't stay any longer.

Gould said she was aware of the nearby fire. Before she left, she was outside watering her lawn, trying to keep the ground wet enough to protect her home if the flames approached. But she thought she'd get some notice when the blaze was getting close enough to become a threat to her.

"I was expecting, actually, someone to come to the door and say it was time to leave, or the phone to go off through the emergency notification service that we've subscribed to," Gould said. "It didn't happen."

Gould says her experience raises concerns about whether the Rural Municipality of Lac du Bonnet's local emergency response let people know to evacuate quickly enough, and whether the provincial emergency notification system should have been used.

"I think it's a learning opportunity," she told host Marcy Markusa in a Friday interview with CBC's Information Radio. "I think we rely far too much on things like Facebook and email, and not everybody has that…. I wasn't the only one who said that they didn't get a notification to evacuate."

Loren Schinkel, the municipality's reeve, said the community posted alerts on social media, used the local emergency notification system Gould said she expected would alert her, and in some cases sent people door-to-door to issue evacuation orders.

But Schinkel also noted just how quickly the Lac du Bonnet fire spread — and the fact that some areas in the community have poor cellphone reception.

"So is that the fault? You know, I can't tell you that," he said Friday. "At the end of this, we're going to sit down and we're going to do a very thorough, fulsome review of what took place here. If we can do something better, by all means, we're all for that." 

The Lac du Bonnet fire — which as of Friday afternoon was estimated to be over 4,000 hectares in size — has turned deadly, taking the lives of a couple who reportedly got trapped at a family home in the municipality and were discovered on Wednesday morning.

WATCH | Manitoba couple killed in wildfire identified:

Schinkel said Friday the fire had been contained to the same boundaries that were established on Tuesday, when the blaze was first reported, and crews were dealing with hot spots to ensure it doesn't flare up again.

When asked Thursday why Manitoba's emergency alert system — which sends alerts to radio, TV and cellphones —wasn't used to let people know about the wildfire evacuations, Premier Wab Kinew said using that tool "has been part of the discussion," but it wasn't ultimately employed because it wasn't part of the municipality's emergency plan.

"When we talk about the response, we're talking about following a plan that has been set up and drilled and practised. And because of that prep work, we don't necessarily want to change, I guess, the M.O., unless there's a serious … call for that to happen," Kinew told reporters at a news conference. 

"So I can tell you that the idea of putting out an emergency alert was part of the discussions that we've had. But in the first instance, we go with the plan that's been drilled locally."