As it happened: Sunday’s evacuation of NWT communities

Good morning, everyone. This is Ollie. Our live coverage is now switching to this page since this one is incredibly long and stretches back to 4pm on Sunday.

See you over at the new page.

An early morning update from Northwestel: 

Internet, long distance phone and cellular service remains disrupted in Hay River, Fort Smith, Enterprise, Fort Providence and Jean-Marie River. 

Phone and cellular services have been restored in Tulita, Délįnę, Fort Good Hope, Norman Wells, Wrigley and Fort Resolution. Work to restore Internet services is ongoing. 

Services remain available but limited in Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk, Tsiigehtchic, Aklavik and Fort McPherson. 

The director of communications for Northwestel says that access to damaged infrastructure remains limited due to wildfire activity. More updates t come. 

Alright, the updates have slowed down so I’m also going to sign off for the night (or I guess morning?). Ollie will be back with you at 6am with more live coverage. 

I hope everyone is safe and able to get a little rest tonight.

I’ll leave the link to the NWT Wildfires Safety Check community organized Facebook page here once more. If you have made it to safety, you can also post here so your family and friends know where you are. If you are looking for someone, you can also post here asking about them or scroll through the updates to see if they have shared that they are safe.

An update from Fort Smith Protective Services:

"The fire activity around Fort Smith has calmed down but extremely smoky conditions continue with wind driving the smoke into the community.

The fire has progressed to approximately the Thebacha turn-off to the west of Bell Rock. Dozer guards are being made to the west of Bell Rock to protect the community from any further advances. ECC and Parks Canada will be moving heavy equipment into the area over night and into the morning. 

Almost everyone has left the community to safety. The people remaining will continue to be supported by essential municipal services, RCMP security, and the Community and Recreation Center is setup to provide shelter-in-place protection should the community be threatened further.

Additional planes will be available in the morning to evacuate anyone else willing to leave."

(We've also added this to our Fort Smith story here).

The next scheduled flight out of Hay River is at 6:30am on Monday, August 14, the Town of Hay River advised in a Facebook update at 1:30am.

Erin Griffiths, the chief executive of the Hay River Health and Social Services Authority, shared on Facebook that residents of the town’s Woodland Manor and Supportive Living Service program arrived in Yellowknife safely on Sunday afternoon along with support staff.

“Staff are doing their best to contact families with updates, but due to current communication failures within the NWT, we have yet to contact everyone,” she wrote.

The Hay River Health Authority plans to set up a contact phone number so people can check in on their family members and will post the number when it’s available.

An Air Tindi flight from Fort Smith is just about to land in Yellowknife.

Near Jean Marie River, the satellite hot-spot footage shows little change since our last update at 7pm on Sunday, August 13. We still have not received any updates on the community since the evacuation was ordered 12 hours ago. 

Meanwhile, here's where satellites are showing hot-spots around Fort Smith and Fort Fitzgerald. This screengrab was taken at 1:30am on Monday, August 14.

Fire SS052 has made significant progress westward, as seen in this screen grab from just before 1:30am on Monday morning. The red squares indicate satellite hot-spots.

The screen grab below was taken just after 7pm.