Firefighters' tactics questioned after blazes in Yellowknife neighbourhood

People in Yellowknife's Latham Island neighbourhood are questioning whetherthey are as protected as other cityresidents, after firefighters faced complicationsbattling two blazes on Saturday.

Latham Island has no fire hydrants and is the only area of the city, apart fromthe Kam Lake Industrial Park, that does not have piped water for most of the year.

Thefire crewswere forced to truck in water to douse a blaze that destroyeda duplex at 87 Morrison Drive on Saturday night, as well as an earlier fire that caused more than $300,000 in damages to a house on Harriet Lane.

Both blazes took place about 200 metres from Great Slave Lake, leading Larry Pontusand some others who live nearby to questionwhy fire crews trucked in the water.

"I wondered if they were using the lake as a source," Pontus told CBC News on Monday.

"I didn't go up to see where they were actually fighting the fire, I stayed down the street a ways. But if they weren't, I think that would've been a good idea, to run a line down to the lake and pump water up for the fire."

Deputy fire chief Chucker Dewar said the department did not draw water from the lake because it would have required arelay of pumping trucks.

"These areas operate on trucked water and, therefore, so does the fire department," Dewar said Monday. "We have two 2,500 gallon tankers that we use to set up tanker shuttles during fire operations."

Surface water lines in the Latham Island area had been turned on a week before, but Dewar said the lines did not carry enough water to battle the Morrison Drive fire.

"A two-inch water line that's used to supply the residences along Morrison Drive wouldn't have met the fire flow that was required to fight this particular fire," Dewar said.

The fire was in the roof of the building when firefighters arrived around 10 p.m. Saturday. At that point, Dewar said, firefighters' priority was protecting nearby houses from damage.

The fire department continued to investigate the cause of both fires Monday. Dewar said there was no indication that they were set deliberately.