N.W.T. government officials, Yellowknife mayor respond to evacuation re-entry emails

Yellowknife's mayor says the city has had meetings with the territorial government around emergency preparedness in the event of future wildfire evacuations, but more discussions are still needed.

CBC News spoke with Rebecca Alty, Yellowknife's mayor; Vince McKay, the minister of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA); and Jay Boast, an information officer with the N.W.T. emergency management organization about an access to information request that showed confusion around who was responsible for Yellowknife's re-entry last summer.

The emails showed frustration between officials of each level of government toward one another. 

During Yellowknife's evacuation, a city official wrote that there was "a lot of miscommunication" happening. 

After being asked to send details on the process of re-entry to the city, an N.W.T. official wrote: 

"Agree to put it in writing — unreal we have to do that, but that's where we are at with these folks." 

In response to this and other comments, Alty said she can appreciate that the re-entry process after the city's evacuation was a "stressful" and "frustrating" time. 

The territory says it is having ongoing meetings with communities to ensure communication is improved and that lessons learned from last year are being implemented.

According to territorial legislation, the responsibility is on the municipality or local authority to order an evacuation, but the order would be based on evidence from experts with the government and other responding agencies.

 "The same would be true for determining when to lift the evacuation order," Boast said. 

But in this case, it was the territorial emergency management organization that issued the order, Boast said. That organization is a committee typically led by an incident commander or the director of emergency response, and includes representatives from different government departments and emergency response personnel like RCMP. 

Boast said this was allowed because the MACA minister at the time, Shane Thompson, declared a territorial state of emergency. 

"It was an extraordinary step because it would normally be the local authority that would declare the evacuation order," he said.

Boast said the situation was unique because of the number of communities being threatened by fires at that time.