Yellowknife evacuees land at YVR, patients transferred to B.C. as city faces mass evacuation
Patients will arrive in Vancouver on flights facilitated by the Canadian Armed Forces
Fifty-five hospital patients and long-term care home residents are being evacuated from the Northwest Territories to B.C., as Yellowknife undergoes a mass evacuation from a fire threatening the city.
At a news conference Thursday morning, Health Minister Adrian Dix said the number of medical evacuees from N.W.T. to B.C. could increase in the coming days.
Dix said the patients, which include 33 pediatric and pre- and post-surgical patients, and 22 long-term care home patients and residents, will arrive at Vancouver International Airport (YVR) on flights co-ordinated by the Canadian Armed Forces on Thursday evening, with more arriving Friday morning.
Most of the long-term care home patients will be transferred to Mount Saint Joseph Hospital in Vancouver. Hospital patients will be triaged and assessed at the operations centre at YVR.
"At an individual level, it's an extraordinary trip for someone in a hospital or care home in the Northwest Territories to come down to Vancouver and very difficult for the staff there, very challenging for the staff here — of course, mostly challenging for the patients," said Dix.
'Like a ghost town'
Evacuees who left Yellowknife on Thursday morning flights arrived in Vancouver in the afternoon, many expressing relief for having avoided the long, daunting trip thousands now face by car.
Hannah Van Der Wielen, who lives in Ottawa and was visiting the Yellowknife area for a wedding, said her final hours in the city were marked with a sense of unease.
"I was eating in the hotel restaurant and I had a feeling like being on the Titanic, from that scene when they're having their fine dining and chaos is breaking out around them," she said.
"Going out on the streets felt like a ghost town, very ethereal with the smoke billowing around the streets and nobody out on the streets around, only several cabs were running this morning. Most cabs had already left."
Van Der Wielen said while she never felt unsafe, she found herself waking up at night and opening her curtains, making sure there was no blaze outside her window.
Claude Mandeville, who lived in Yellowknife for 10 years and was visiting with her family, said their anxiety spiked after their Air Canada flight was cancelled earlier in the week. They mulled the possibility of borrowing a car to make the long drive home to Vancouver.
"I think I needed to feel reassured that we were going to be heading out either way. With Air Canada we were kind of skeptical — are we really going to get this plane or not? So we were trying to make a Plan B if we were not still getting on the plane. So some friends of ours said you can take our vehicle, you can drive out," she said.
'B.C. stands ready'
While the majority of evacuees from the territory are being sent to Alberta, B.C Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Bowinn Ma said B.C. is ready to welcome more "as needed."
"B.C. stands ready to provide further assistance to the Northwest Territories. At the same time, we are not letting up on our own wildfire season here in British Columbia," she said.
"We are preparing for what may be difficult days ahead and we're ensuring that we have the resources to support people here in B.C."
Provincial officials warned the next two days will be the most critical of B.C.'s wildfire season, as a cold front forecast to sweep through southern B.C. is likely to bring high winds on Thursday.
Dix said B.C. currently has between 9,400 and 9,700 patients in acute care hospitals and has been working with partners in the N.W.T. to accommodate evacuated patients.
"These are numbers we are able to absorb. These are challenging times of course but it goes without saying that in this country we support other jurisdictions, just as they support us," he said.
The last time B.C. facilitated a major medical evacuation was in 2021, when 300 patients were evacuated by plane from the Interior Health region to Metro Vancouver because of a nearby wildfire.
Residents of Yellowknife had been warily watching a nearby fire for days, with some residents pre-emptively leaving the city as a precaution.
The evacuation order was made on Wednesday night, giving people who hadn't already left the city the official signal that it was time to go. Authorities have asked people to depart the city by noon, local time, on Friday.
The evacuation order affects nearly 22,000 people, with many leaving via car. The closest evacuee reception centre is over 1,100 kilometres from Yellowknife.