Friends and relatives in Ottawa watch from afar as loved ones flee Yellowknife wildfire

• Live in the Ottawa area and have a connection to the situation in Yellowknife? Contact Guy at guy.quenneville@cbc.ca 

Ruben Komangapik didn't sleep well on Wednesday night; he was worried about his brother-in-law and artist friends in Yellowknife, he says. 

Earlier that night, government officials urged all residents of the Northwest Territories capital — home to more than 20,000 people — to leave the city by Friday at noon.

A wildfire more than 160,000 hectares in size was only about 15 kilometres northwest of the community as of Thursday afternoon. Other parts of the territory have been evacuated because of fires too. 

"It's kinda hard to think of other things right now," said Komangapik, an Ottawa-based Inuk carver and filmmaker from the neighbouring territory of Nunavut. 

In Yellowknife, those who can't drive out on the only highway going south, or take a commercial plane, are being shepherded out via government-organized flights. Passengers are being asked to limit their luggage to carry-on-sized bags. 

If the flames get to their tools, "that's gonna really affect their life," Komangapik said of his friends. 

"Even if they're safe physically, it's also, on top of that, thinking about their belongings."

Packing a wedding dress

Courtney Howard, an emergency room doctor and Yellowknife resident for more than a decade, happens to be in Ottawa this week to give a medical summit address touching on wildfires and health, she said. 

But she's also been on the phone with her sister, who was looking after Howard's home on Latham Island, on the northeast side of Yellowknife.

"There have been some really difficult considerations and conversations," Howard said on Thursday.  

"We spent a bunch of time trying to figure out if my mom's wedding dress could fit into our fire box, which it couldn't. She's flying out with my mom's wedding dress today."

Listen | Howard on the health effects of wildfire smoke:

Two of her daughter's childhood drawings made it into the box, though the episode underscored the importance of having an evacuation plan, Howard added.

"We bought that fire box a couple of years ago and it's never the right day to put everything that you would want to be protected into a fire box, and so we didn't."

RCMP family separated after vacation

On Wednesday, Yellowknife-based clothing designer Laura Gavel said she talked her husband through the important documents — including their marriage certificate — he should secure as he packed up their belongings.

The couple, along with their two- and five-year-old children, had been vacationing in Halifax. But he went on to Yellowknife, back to his job as an RCMP member, while she stayed behind with her kids in Pakenham, a village west of Ottawa. 

That was always the plan, she said, but "with everything that's going on, I'm grateful to be here."

Police officers, like her husband, will have to worry about getting people out of town and making sure everyone is safe, Gavel said.

"I have friends who work at the hospital who just got released today. But I think police and firefighters will be the the last to go," she said. 

It's not clear when the family will be reunited, as Gavel was supposed to fly back next week. She hasn't broached the topic with her kids yet.

"I've kind of been shielding them a little bit from it," she said. "I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's sort of what I chose to do because I just feel like the amount of questions and concerns and worries are not something that [kids that age] need to worry about at this point. I think we'll cross that bridge when, and if, it happens."

It's not clear either if her kids will resume school in Yellowknife, as scheduled, at the end of this month, Gavel said. 

'It's breaking hearts'

Mike Bryant is headed south on Friday. 

The publisher of a Yellowknife-based, decades-old line of independent community newspapers is scheduled to fly with his family to Alberta and then to Ottawa where his cousin and in-laws live. 

"I'm stressed out. I have a sense of dread," he told CBC's Alberta At Noon on Thursday. "A little bit of optimism and hope, but overall it's just this sort of this feeling of helplessness."

Yellowknife endured a summer of smoke and scary-looking skies due to wildfires back in 2014, and "[I] thought that nothing could get any more apocalyptic than that," Bryant said.

"Now we're faced with something completely unprecedented. It's breaking hearts."