Six takeaways from KPMG’s review of Yellowknife’s evacuation

The final report into how Yellowknife’s 2023 evacuation was handled by City Hall is now available. Here are six sets of excerpts that illustrate some key findings.

KPMG, the company hired to review the City of Yellowknife’s actions, said in a summary for councillors that key concerns were a lack of clarity between government agencies and communications deficiencies.

The full version of the report provides more background information than the summaries made public so far.

In doing so, the report relies on data from an online survey of residents, feedback from a public meeting and other meetings held with specific groups, and a review of both public documentation and internal documents. (In general, KPMG sums up what it found in internal documents rather than reproducing any of them verbatim.)

Here are six themes that emerge from the document. Note that the report focuses on the city, not the GNWT. Reviews of the GNWT’s actions are still to come.

Planning in advance

The context: Many residents have asked what the city had done before the summer of 2023 to prepare for the kind of scenario that ultimately faced Yellowknife last August.

KPMG said: “Prior to the 2023 wildfire season, the city had not participated in extensive planning workshops or joint exercises with partner organizations in relation to complex emergency scenarios such as a mass evacuation. Furthermore, the city and partners had not developed any shared planning documentation to address mass evacuation of the city.

“The city lacked a comprehensive training and exercise plan for emergency response. Moreover, many staff members who were mobilized in the city’s emergency operations centre had not previously been trained in the incident command system or familiarized with emergency operations centre operations. In addition, the city had not recently conducted a full emergency response exercise.

“Despite managing to activate a functional emergency operations centre, the absence of clear role definitions and responsibilities hindered city staff from fully carrying out the standard practices and requirements of their respective roles. The lack of prior training and exercises potentially contributed to delays in the city emergency operations centre becoming fully functional and in the fulfillment of each role. Consequently, the city emergency operations centre faced difficulties in effectively coordinating response efforts during the wildfire response.”

The context: In July 2023, Yellowknife’s mayor said the city hadn’t done any firesmarting work for the past two years. From the start of August, a huge amount of work and money went into firesmarting, building massive fire breaks and installing sprinkler systems that used up to a thousand gallons of water per minute.

KPMG said: “While these efforts were important for the protection of the city of Yellowknife, the delayed start in implementing these measures created challenges in sourcing equipment and implementing community protection measures with the impending threat of an approaching fire. The delayed start of these actions also took valuable resources and focus away from other emergency response operations, such as preparing for a potential evacuation.”

Making information and plans available

The context: Finding information from government agencies immediately before and during the evacuation proved extremely difficult for some residents.

KPMG said quoting survey data: “When asked to assess the extent of information received regarding wildfire risk and the preparedness activities that individuals and families can take, 80 percent of respondents indicated a very low to low level of information provided.

“Only 15 percent of respondents indicated that they had high to very high confidence in what steps to take after the issuance of an evacuation alert. It was noted by respondents that more information about wildfire risk, and details of the city or the GNWT’s existing plans for evacuation both within and outside of the community, would improve opportunities for personal preparedness.

“The lack of coordinated public communications between the city and the GNWT during the evacuation of the city of Yellowknife resulted in an erosion of public trust in both governments. Seventy percent of respondents to the survey indicated a very low or low rating of the extent and effectiveness of information received regarding the evacuation, procedures, and access to services.”

The context: Pushed to provide some kind of plan for an evacuation, the city released what was called an “evacuation framework” last summer. Not many people felt it was useful.

KPMG said: “On August 14, 2023, the city posted on Facebook that ‘Yellowknife is not currently under threat of wildfires. In the event that an evacuation was ever required for all or a portion of Yellowknife, the City would follow its evacuation framework.’

“However, many stakeholders and members of the public expressed that this framework did not contain the information they needed to prepare for evacuation. In particular, it didn’t contain specific information regarding trigger points for an evacuation, information on where to go in the case of an evacuation, and how best to prepare. Although the city encouraged community members to be prepared, without the city or the GNWT sharing details of the evacuation plan and process, many community members faced confusion about how to make their own plans for evacuating.

“Many people interviewed expressed that they would have rather heard from the city and the GNWT that there was no plan in place, than hear there was a plan and later find out that either there wasn’t a plan in place or that the plan that existed wasn’t sufficient.”

Helping the vulnerable

The context: Multiple organizations who help or represent vulnerable people in Yellowknife – people with disabilities, people who don’t have homes, and people in other situations that make evacuating an even more daunting prospect than it already was – say both the organizations and the vulnerable people themselves often felt unsupported.

KPMG said: “Several community members with specific needs shared through interviews and public engagement that they did not feel as though their unique requirements were considered as part of the GNWT or the city’s preparedness and planning, and expressed a lack of information shared on how to prepare themselves for an evacuation.

“Some articulated how they were afraid that that they would not be provided with transportation and would therefore be left behind. Others could not fully understand information about preparedness and risk being shared due to language barriers.

“Several of the organizations that support vulnerable populations shared in interviews that they also didn’t feel prepared to coordinate the evacuation of the populations they serve. Most of the organizations interviewed said that they had never been included in any preparedness or planning activities with the City or the GNWT.”

Keeping critical services alive

The context: As the evacuation got under way, some city employees left without their work laptops and consequently couldn’t do much. The city even called some people back. Meanwhile, the likes of grocery stores and other services weren’t sure what was expected of them.

KPMG said the city and GNWT “had different approaches to establishing a list of critical services, which were misaligned due to a lack of shared understanding of jurisdiction and roles.”

“This led to confusion amongst critical service staff about whether they should remain in the city of Yellowknife or evacuate with the general population. Some critical services, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, were unsure whether they were considered critical and whether they had authorization to stay and continue to provide services. This meant that some self-identified critical service workers were concerned about the potential legal ramifications of staying in the city.

“These critical services also reported challenges in getting regular information from the city and the GNWT in support of their continued operation, including how critical service workers would evacuate if the wildfire entered the city of Yellowknife. Because of the overall lack of clear designation of critical service workers, staff across various agencies and organizations left the city of Yellowknife along with the general population, and it wasn’t until their employers were identified as critical that the staff were asked to return.”

Coming home

The context: The City of Yellowknife and YKDFN jointly declared a return date for residents in a late Friday news release that conspicuously did not feature the GNWT, the first time such a communications choice had been made during the emergency.

KPMG said a “review of documentation shared by the city, and interviews with staff from the city and the GNWT, confirmed some challenges in coordinating the transition to the re-entry phase and determining when to announce the beginning of re-entry to the city of Yellowknife.”

“This was in part due to lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities for re-entry and recovery, as well as disagreement about which government was primarily responsible for coordinating the re-entry process.

“The NWT Emergency Plan that was publicly available during 2023 indicated that when returning evacuees, local authorities should work with the GNWT to ensure the community is safe and identify priority groups. The city’s request for assistance to GNWT for support for evacuation planning did not specifically address the need for support for re-entry.”

It wasn’t all bad

The context: KPMG has maintained that it found plenty of things that went right, particularly as the evacuation went on and things like communications improved. One example is the city’s relationship with the Yellowknives Dene First Nation.

KPMG said: “Staff representatives from YKDFN noted in interviews that they were not aware of having received advanced notice from the GNWT in the days leading up to the issuance of the evacuation order. However, they did note how the city proactively reached out to them to advise them of the GNWT’s plan to issue an evacuation order and invited them to integrate into the city’s emergency operations centre.

“The city provided their representatives with direct information, an office space, and food while working in the city emergency operations centre. The integration of YKDFN in the city’s emergency operations centre significantly enhanced joint decision-making, planning, coordination, and issuing of joint communications. A staff representative of YKDFN expressed that ‘the reason that we were at all successful at managing the evacuation of YKDFN in Yellowknife, was because of the City, who brought in the YKDFN early.'”