No action yet on Yellowknife's 2-year-old wildfire protection plan

City of Yellowknife officials won't say if any of the recommendations contained in a two-year-old plan to protect the city from wildfires have been implemented yet.

• Scroll down to read the plan

The plan was prepared by the territorial government in 2012 to highlight problems the city could face in the event of an approaching forest fire. 

It examines which areas of the city's neighbourhoods are at a higher risk of being affected by wildfires and makes 11 recommendations to lessen risks to the city and homeowners, including public education on evacuation planning and Fire Smart techniques to protect structures. 

Dennis Marchiori, Yellowknife's director of public safety, wouldn't say if the plan's recommendations had been implemented.

"We look at the recommendations, we make determinations of what we can do at any point in time," he said.

"Any sort of Fire Smarting is going to take 10 to 15 years. We just can't start actioning every recommendation from every report we get."

In the report, the current Fire Chief says under the right conditions, a fire could present a significant risk to the city.

Marchiori said the mayor and council need to approve any Fire Smarting before it happens.

"We have a budget process coming up this year and will be done in the November/December and that's where council can make the decisions based on the funding provided for the various government departments," he said.

One of the recommendations suggests an evacuation plan be created. A specific wildfire evacuation plan doesn't exist but Marchiori said, in the unlikely event people would need to be moved, the city would enlist the help of the territorial and federal governments.