Report details confusion and 'risky' efforts to move care home residents during 2023 Yellowknife evacuation

A report looking at how Yellowknife's AVENS long-term care home was evacuated during last year's wildfire emergency paints a picture of confusion, crumbled plans, and sometimes "risky" efforts to move vulnerable seniors onto aircraft using baggage carts.

The report, titled "AVENS and the 2023 Wildfire Evacuations," was obtained by CBC News through an access-to-information request and it contains many troubling details about the evacuation of the facility in August 2023. Recommendations included in the report were shared publicly by AVENS last January.

Among other things, the report describes how most AVENS staff had left Yellowknife immediately after the city-wide evacuation order was declared, leaving barely enough staff at the facility to care for residents and ensure they were safely moved out of the city.

AVENS CEO Darryl Dolynny described it as a "skeletal" crew that was left to manage the emergency evacuation for dozens of residents.

According to a post-evacuation review AVENS shared with the government, part of the reason for staff shortages was that AVENS didn't have any way to communicate with staff other than through email.

At the time of the evacuation, there were 57 long-term care residents at AVENS, including some who were receiving specialized care for dementia or had serious mobility challenges.

The report states that AVENS staff didn't learn they would be responsible for moving their residents during an evacuation until about two weeks before the order was issued. Prior to that, the AVENS emergency plan contained no provisions for evacuations.

When CBC asked Dolynny what the cause of the uncertainty was, he said it was an "assumption" based on the fact that AVENS is contracted by the territorial health authority to care for long-term care patients only at their own facility. Staff had assumed that in the case of an evacuation, the health authority would be in charge.

Before Yellowknife was evacuated, AVENS staff had sourced potential flights for the long-term care home residents, temporary hotel accommodations and security in Edmonton, and transportation to and from evacuation flights. But when the evacuation actually happened, many of those plans fell through.

When AVENS staff tried to schedule evacuation flights on Aug. 16, 2023, hours before the city-wide evacuation order was officially declared, they were told the agreement would be voided by the territorial state of emergency and they would then need to go through the territory's Emergency Management Organization (EMO) after all.

Those in charge at the EMO eventually connected AVENS staff with the Canadian Armed Forces which secured a C-130 Hercules plane for the evacuation on the afternoon of Aug. 17.

But getting residents from the AVENS facility to the plane took over six hours that day, partly because the City of Yellowknife was not able to provide access to transit buses as promised.

There were also "real challenges and safety risks" in getting the residents onto the Hercules plane, the report says, as there was "no proper equipment for loading residents with mobility challenges."

The Hercules did not end up lifting off until after midnight and the AVENS residents arrived in Edmonton at around 2:30 a.m. when, the report states, "some residents had to endure another long wait" on Leduc city buses while issues with the hotel bookings were sorted out.