What’s Yellowknife doing to protect the city right now?

Yellowknife’s city manager says work is under way to protect the municipality from potential wildfire threats.

“We are making sure that everything we can do with our sprinklers, with our fire breaks, are in place,” Sheila Bassi-Kellett said during a lunchtime meeting at City Hall on Monday.

As stated at a previous council meeting, Bassi-Kellett said the city is prioritizing creating 100-metre-wide fire breaks to the west of the Sand Pits, around the Engle Industrial District, sewage lagoon road, and Deh Cho Boulevard.

In a notice on Monday, the city said portions of Deh Cho Boulevard will be closed as this work has begun. Local traffic will be allowed to access the area. The city urged residents to avoid the area to prevent disruptions.

Bassi-Kellett said sprinklers are also being deployed behind Grace Lake, Enterprise Drive and Kam Lake, as well as every 15 metres along the fire break by the Sand Pits bush trail. She said the city has rented two trailers with 100 wildfire sprinklers each, which have now arrived, and Canadian Dewatering is looking at high-volume, high-speed pumps for the city to use.

Bassi-Kellett said residents should take firesmarting actions around their properties and follow the fire ban across the North Slave and South Slave regions, including not throwing cigarette butts or riding vehicles that can cause sparks, such as motorbikes or ATVs, in areas with brush.

A wildfire burning between Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀ breached a retardant line as winds pushed the fire to the east over the weekend. Fire ZF015 is currently burning around 30 kilometres north of the city at its closest point. NWT Fire said on Monday that Yellowknife, Ndılǫ and Dettah are not currently at threat from ZF015 but residents should be prepared if the situation changes.

“When we say that the city is not currently under threat, that’s not a case of us just kicking up our feet and relaxing,” Mayor Rebecca Alty said. “It’s a case of diligently, hour by hour, minute by minute, monitoring those winds and taking extra actions if anything needs to change. It’s putting all that energy into the fire breaks.”

NWT Fire said air tankers and helicopters will hit the east side of ZF015 with “as many missions as possible” to slow its growth.

Bassi-Kellett said in the event of a threat to Yellowknife, the city has an evacuation framework that would be deployed based on the specific conditions and risk. There was no detail about what that would look like based on the conditions currently facing the city.

Bassi-Kellett said staff would “determine whether or not it’s safe for people to shelter in place, do people shelter in the community … or is there a need to evacuate?”

“We would put that out through … a number of different platforms,” she said. “If worst came to worst, we would be in neighbourhoods, much like an ice cream truck going through letting people know.”

Don’t listen to rumours, don’t panic

Bassi-Kellett, the mayor and several councillors stressed the importance of getting information about the territory’s wildfire situation through reliable sources.

“Don’t listen to rumours. These are not good things for us to be following because it can be very alarming to people,” she said.

“The worst thing you can do,” Alty added, “is start perpetuating these rumours that then take staff time to source and find out that it was actually just a rumour, and they’ve wasted their time instead of actually being able to work on the emergency.”

Bassi-Kellett said while evacuation orders in the southern part of the territory and wildfire smoke in Yellowknife can be unnerving and stressful, residents should stay calm and take actions within their control, such as firesmarting and preparing an emergency kit.

Councillor Steve Payne said he had seen some “panic behaviour” with “gigantic lineups” at gas pumps in the city.

“I’m very confident in the work that the city has been doing,” he said. “It is important for people to keep a calm head and the people that are in charge of this have a lot more knowledge on fire suppression, and how to keep us safe, than what the general public does.”

Councillor Stacie Smith shared a message of unity during “scary times.”

“This is home for all of us, so we’re all in the same boat,” she said.

“Yellowknife, be Yellowknife, is all I can say. We’ve seen time and again how we have stuck together, how we have helped one another out, and that’s what we have to do again.”