NWT launches program to integrate wildland and structural firefighting

The NWT government and NWT Fire Chiefs Association have unveiled a new program intended to coordinate wildland and structural firefighting to better protect communities from wildfires.

It’s called the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, program, referring to the area where homes and other infrastructure meet or mix with the natural environment.

In the NWT, territorial wildland firefighters are responsible for dealing with wildfires on the land, while municipal fire departments are in charge of structural fires in communities. Officials said the new wildland-urban interface program aims to improve coordination and response when wildfires threaten communities.

“One of the key pieces of the puzzle here is making sure that we’re approaching community protection scenarios from a unified fire services perspective,” said Mike Westwick, manager of prevention and mitigation with the Department of Environment and Climate Change.

“It’s bringing all those skill sets under one roof, one common command structure and having processes in place to do that.”

The territory said its program will focus on training community structural firefighters in wildland-urban interface response tactics like deploying sprinklers and operating fire trucks and engines in communities.

So far, four community fire departments are involved in the WUI program: Hay River, Fort Smith, Inuvik and Fort Simpson.

Officials said one of the aims of the program is to be able to deploy WUI-trained firefighters to communities with limited local firefighting capacity, reducing the need to rely on out-of-territory aid.

The NWT government has purchased structural protection units  – used to rapidly deploy sprinklers and structure protection equipment – for Fort Smith and Hay River.

Learning lessons from 2023

Jay Macdonald, the minister for environment and climate change, said as wildfire seasons become longer and more severe, the territory needs to be increasingly prepared.

The need for better integration between wildland and sturctural firefighting to address wildfire threats to communities was identified in the review of the NWT’s emergency response to the 2023 wildfire season.

Westwick said 2023 was the first time in the history of wildfire management in the NWT that homes in communities were lost to wildfires.

“Fire departments recognized that they have a crucial role in protecting communities when threatened by wildfires,” said Travis Wright, president of the NWT Fire Chiefs Association and the fire chief for Hay River.

He said the association and NWT government created a wildland-urban interface coordinating group in 2025 and co-developed guidelines for the WUI program, setting standards for equipment, training and deployment.

“In 2023, what was missing … was not the will or the skill, it was a system,” said communities minister Vince McKay.

“We didn’t have a common system for training and the development of our people in WUI capacity. We didn’t have the processes in place to support the communities in doing so. We had no clear standards for mobilizing resources to assist other communities. We saw communities struggle with uncertainty on cost because there were no clear reimbursement guidelines. That is what this program addresses.”

He said the program establishes a clear chain of command during wildfires, standardized reimbursement and training pathways to build local capacity.