Mayor of Tuk says community feels abandoned over record snow

The mayor of Tuktoyaktuk says the NWT government has responded late to winter storms that brought record snowfall and caused multiple highway closures.

Erwin Elias said the community had to call a state of emergency in December after running out of supplies because the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway closed for more than a week.

The road closed again on the evening of February 2. It hasn’t reopened since.

“We’re dealing with medication, medical supplies to the community and to the patients, people with serious health needs to catch up on appointments,” Elias said, listing residents’ concerns.

“There has been zero support in regards to food or anything from GNWT. It’s really terrible.”

Young Tuktoyaktuk hockey players who attended the Gwich’in Cup tournament in Inuvik last week were stuck in the town until Wednesday afternoon, Elias said.

Elias said staff made sure the youth had a place to stay and healthy food to eat while in Inuvik. On Facebook, hamlet staff were shown preparing food boxes for the team.

“During that time we weren’t worried about budget. We made sure that our kids are safe and our kids are eating good. That’s a priority for us – the logistics and the bureaucracy later,” Elias said.

“For the [territorial] government to even say how it is going, no updates at all. Still today, in regards to where they are with the road or when it is potentially going to open. No plan if we run out of supplies. No plan or anything in place. They’re abandoning the community.”

Elias worries that if more snow falls, closures like this could last until the summer. He believes the highway’s condition “got out of hand” because of a delay in approving funding for snow clearing.

“They finally pulled the trigger and said, ‘OK, send extra equipment out and we’ll pay for it so that we can get this done quicker.’ The way it was going in the past, you know, it would take another two weeks,” he explained.

“So, the good thing I guess I can say is that they have agreed, finally, to approve extra funds to put more equipment on to get the highway open … It started in December and then we’ve got the whole of January, so it took them a little over a month to say, well, this is really serious.”

In a Wednesday evening update posted to Facebook, the NWT’s Department of Infrastructure said it had met with contractors to develop a reopening plan for the highway.

“We know the NWT roads that connect our communities are important for so many reasons and we are working hard to reopen Highway 10 between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk,” the department stated.

A spokesperson for the department said there is no timeline for its reopening.

“We do not provide an estimated time for re-open because opening the road depends on many factors, including weather (which we’ve had record snowfall in the area), unknown conditions as the road is being worked on, and ongoing status of equipment,” the spokesperson stated by email.

“The Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway will reopen once it is safe to travel on.”

Branden Walker, a researcher visiting the area, posted videos to Facebook of ongoing work on the highway. The footage shows an extraordinary quantity of snow burying the road.

“Those road crews have their work cut out,” he said.

Elias contrasted the vast amount of snow with other weather events that have affected the NWT in recent months.

“This is not a flood, we’re not having fires here. We have snow that has definitely affected the highway to a point where it has directly affected us as well,” he said.

“Does snow count as a natural disaster, or is it different?”