Meeting that promised Hay River 're-entry' plan details marred by technical problems

A public meeting that promised wildfire evacuees in the N.W.T. some sense of when they might be able to return to their homes ended prematurely Tuesday afternoon because of technical difficulties.

A YouTube livestream of the Town of Hay River's meeting started to encounter difficulties with glitchy audio about 20 minutes in. The town tried to fix it, but ultimately decided to call down the livestream — opting to record a presentation instead that the town said it'll post online Wednesday morning. 

"We know that everyone wants to come home, we know this has been extremely stressful on so many levels, and we're doing everything we can to get you back home as soon as it is safe," said Hay River Mayor Kandis Jameson before the technical difficulties began. 

Jameson said the meeting, which took place in Hay River's council chambers, was her first opportunity to speak to all of her constituents since the evacuation happened more than a week ago. She was joined by Kátł'odeeche First Nation Chief April Martel as well as other wildfire, territorial and town officials. 

"We had a safe evacuation and we are not going to risk bringing people back too soon. There are a lot of mixed messages out there in terms of when we should allow people back into the community. To be clear, we'll be relying on the advice of the forest fire experts when it comes to ending the evacuation."

Westly Steed, the incident commander for Environment and Climate Change, said the fire has consumed 3,200 hectares of land so far, and is still considered out of control. It has damaged "numerous" buildings in Kátł'odeeche, he said, and there haven't been any fires within Hay River. 

"We've made considerable progress. We've had some very good days, and we've had some very challenging days," he said. 

Steed said crews have used dozers to build control lines through the forest from the southwest corner all the way to the south end of the fire and over to the east. The focus now, he said, was its east side. 

The technical problems began while Steed was comparing satellite images of the fire over the course of the past week, and before Hay River senior administrative officer Glenn Smith had the opportunity to provide people with an update on what's been called a "re-entry" plan. 

The fight so far

Firefighting crews successfully limited the growth of the wildfire threatening Hay River and Kátł'odeeche First Nation reserve in the N.W.T. over the weekend, but it still poses a risk to those communities, according to NWT Fire.

In an update posted on Facebook at 9 a.m., NWT Fire said crews have built nearly 14 kilometres of control lines — described earlier by Steed — through the forest over the past week. 

"We've been successful in meeting our objectives," said Mike Westwick, a wildfire information officer for the N.W.T. government, on Tuesday morning. 

Westwick said officials will assess whether the control lines will be able to prevent the fire's growth in the coming days. The Town of Hay River has said the assessment will help plan when residents will be able to return. 

"We would like to remind people that until lines are built, strengthened, and held across the southern part of the fire, there will continue to be risk to the communities," reads the NWT Fire update. . 

Westwick also spoke about dealing with the fire throughout the summer. He said if the response continues to go well, fewer resources will be needed even if the fire isn't entirely extinguished. 

"There'll be a lot of mop up work here, but that requires less resources than attacking [a fire] that would be aggressively coming towards communities," he said. "Again, this really depends on work continuing to go well, but we've been happy the past couple of days."

Half of fires this season caused by people

Despite an ongoing ban on open air fires, a human-caused fire flared up over the weekend in Fort Smith. There have been 15 fires so far this season in the N.W.T., and nine of them are still active. 

Westwick said humans have caused more than half of the fires — including the one threatening Hay River and Kátł'odeeche.

"Human-caused fires are typically more dangerous than fires caused naturally by lightning because they happen closer to communities and things people care about," he said. 

"We really need people to give firefighters a hand this season because these hot, dry conditions are not expected to go away."